Antumbra
by embyr-75
Summary: He had seen her face in his dreams, felt her heart beating beside his, heard her breathe when he listened, for as long as he could remember. When he finally became her Shadow, she was everything he had dreamed and more. She was also much, much too clever for her own good. [BotW AU, Sheikah!Link, Zelink]
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: A fic request from my Tumblr that totally spiraled out of control. I don't even know how this happened it just sort of vomited itself out and I love it. T_T Hope you guys like!_

**One**

He knelt on the cracked, worn steps, where a thousand generations of his ancestors had knelt before him, and offered his wrists to be bound. The ropes dug deep, tied deftly in the dark, as the voice spoke the ritual words that had been spoken so many times before, and yet felt as though they could only ever have been meant for him.

"You see her face in your dreams. You feel her heart beating beside yours. You hear her breathe when you listen. Has it always been?"

"It has always been."

"Do you offer yourself to her? Do you bind your soul in eternal servitude to hers?"

The word leapt up into his mouth even as his body trembled with a thrill of fear—because eternity was no exaggeration, and no amount of devotion could impel a mere mortal to swear to that without terror.

"Yes."

Hands pressed him down, down, until he was bent with his face against the stone, and held him there. He flinched as the knife bit into the tender flesh above his eye, and the hands held him tighter, and he swallowed pain and doubt as they carved three triangles into his brow and a teardrop beneath. Then they pulled him up by his wrists, forward, and slid the blade between his hands. Blood ran into his eye, rendering him half blind. The hands let him go, leaving him alone in the dark, held aloft by the blade hovering at the rope.

"So let it always be."

The knife pulled up and ripped through his restraints, and old magic flooded him, binding him to something, pulling him somewhere else, so cripplingly that his legs gave out. Her name filled him as his knees hit the stone and spilled out of his mouth.

"_Zelda_."

The Elders waited as he trembled and gasped, as he tried to crawl out from under the weight that would never leave him for as long as he lived. Suddenly her heartbeat was stronger. Her breathing was louder. He clapped his hands over his ears and screamed through his teeth as it drowned him out, as he felt his own heart, his own breath, less and less, and fragile, withered hands took his wrists.

"Go to her," the Elder whispered. "There is no peace for you without her now."

The glow of a waxing crescent moon spilled over the stone, and he turned from looming, blood red eyes and ran straight through it into darkness.

He chased after the stabbing pain the second heartbeat had become in his ribs, the deafening sound of her every breath, for two days and two nights. Her heart finally started pulsing normally again as he neared the castle, whitewashed like a grave in moonlight, and summoned him quietly upwards. He scaled the walls and spires in the shadows, panting towards the promise of the face he had dreamed of for as long as he could remember.

He slid the window over the balcony open and slipped inside, quiet as a whisper.

He stopped to listen. Her heartbeat was steady and her breathing slow. She was sound asleep. He moved again, crossing the room with a sputtering heart and trembling hands, until he was beside her bed. It was the strangest thing, hearing her breathe aloud as she slept, watching the blankets rise and fall with the sound, and still hearing it, so much louder and so much deeper, from somewhere within.

He almost reached out to touch her, to brush away a strand of golden hair that had tumbled across her face, but he held back. He would be her shadow for the rest of his life, and perhaps beyond. Such a pointless indulgence should at least be earned. And he hadn't done a thing for her. Not yet. Once he made sure she was safe, once he made sure she was protected, and happy, and wanting for absolutely nothing, then, maybe, he would give himself the very great pleasure of whispering her name aloud when she couldn't hear it, or touching her pillow after she had turned in her sleep, just so he could feel her warmth.

He melted into the shadows and began his long night vigil, waiting for her eyes to open with the light—desperate to see if they were the same, flawless green he had seen in his dreams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Two**

For a few weeks everything went smoothly. She didn't venture out of the castle walls often, so making sure she was well protected required little effort on his part. But he did what he could to make her life easier: he would watch her scour the room for something she had lost, and then find it and leave it somewhere she hadn't checked yet—a drawer, or behind a book on her end table—and whenever she was restless in her sleep he would sprinkle her with magic that would dissolve nightmares.

And as for her—she was everything he had dreamed and more. Her eyes glittered like the sea, and her hair was always moving with the wind, silken strands twisting and tangling like something wild. She was wise, and kind, and her voice was like wine and her laugh was like water. Whenever her heart raced he thrilled with her, and whenever she slept her slow, even breaths brought him peace he had never known when they were apart.

But she was also observant, and clever, and sometimes she seemed to know she wasn't alone.

She would tilt her head, when she walked through the castle corridors at night with her chamberstick, as though listening for footfalls behind her, and sometimes, when she found something he had left out of its hiding place for her, she would stare at it and frown.

Then, one night, just before blowing out the candles, she decided to pull her nightstand closer to the bed and left the candelabra lit. He snuffed it out when she finally drifted off and loomed at the headboard to scowl at her. Sheikah were confined to the shadows, and he didn't appreciate being held at bay.

The ritual with the candlelight continued like clockwork, but on the second night she had taken to sleeping with a dagger close to her chest, which baffled him.

It was four nights before he realized his error. Because he kept snuffing them out the moment she fell asleep, the candlesticks were never burning down.

He forced himself to leave the candelabra lit once he realized, lingering agitatedly outside the sphere of its light until it finally went out on its own, but that backfired too. The sudden difference only confirmed in her mind that someone else had been there, putting out her candlelight while she slept. The night after that failed experiment she laid in bed, heart hammering, breathing staccatoed, and it was hours before she fell asleep.

He sat awake with her, cursing his own foolishness. But he didn't know how he should remedy his mistakes. He could retreat from her life, always watching from a distance, never interfering unless it was absolutely necessary. But what would be the point of him then? And he knew revealing himself was out of the question, even if it was tempting.

He decided he would distance himself if he must, but first he would see if he could simply get her used to the idea of his constant, intangible presence. He went back to snuffing out the candlesticks. He found her lost things. He chased away her nightmares. Once, when he was feeling entirely too frustrated, he left a jeweled hairpin he found behind her vanity right on the nightstand beside the candelabra.

That gave her pause, and he watched, rapt, as she sat on the edge of her bed in the morning and stared at it, brow furrowed in thought.

"These were a set," she murmured aloud, finally, and then peeled the covers away to dress and go down for breakfast.

That evening he had found the matching hairpin and placed it beside the first, and when she saw them on her dresser she didn't look the least bit surprised.

And even thought it really shouldn't have, that made him smile.

She shoved her nightstand back into place and went back to blowing the candles out. She stopped taking a dagger to bed. And he was much more careful. But she still lay awake for a long time at night, fingers rapping against the sheets and pensive sighs falling from her mouth and rattling through his ribs. She was frustrated, too.

Then one night, her blood pounding hot through his veins, she whipped the blankets off near midnight and bounded behind the dressing screen, emerging again in full travel clothes. He followed her, pulse spiking, through the dark castle corridors; into the quiet outer courtyards; right under the noses of the guards into town, and then west, towards the back alleys, and he got the distinct impression he was being flushed out.

She moved slowly, heart sputtering, through Castle Town's less savory quarters, and pulled her hood down, inviting danger with that pretty face. More than once he watched blades and teeth gleam in her wake, and more than once he brought men to their silent, panicked end, a hand over clapped their mouth and a dagger plunged into their neck, holding them until they stilled and lowering them against the alley walls for someone else to find in the morning.

She slipped out of town unscathed, following the roads up into the plains north of the castle spires, and finally came to rest on an overlook, cheeks rosy with exertion and the cold. She crossed her arms and tapped her fingers some more—thinking, or scheming. Clearly disappointed that her jaunt through the back alleys hadn't produced him.

Huffing another sigh, she turned and foraged wood for a fire, building a decent tent with dead logs and good tinder, and was moments away from striking the flints to set it alight when she stopped, eyes flickering in thought. He stared, waiting, counting her heartbeats in his chest.

_Light it, light it, light it._

They were deep into autumn already, and the night was frigid, and the last thing he wanted was for her to deny herself warmth on the off chance that leaving her campsite dark might tempt him closer and earn her a glimpse of his shadow. But her jaw set, and his heart sank, and she put the flints away, pulling her cloak tighter.

He didn't know who to be angrier with—her for being so inquisitive, or himself for being so careless. Her heart pounded in his chest, hot and slow as the lateness and the cold tried to drag her into sleep. Her breath shuddered through him, teeth chattering and fingers biting into her clothes.

And he was miserable, trapped between a rock and a hard place as she spiraled closer to illness or frostbite or worse. He was her shadow, and there was nothing for him but to keep her happy and protected. But he could hardly assassinate the cold.

Finally, she dipped her face into her arms as the wind blew, and heart racing, instincts screaming, he moved. Her fire sprang to life with a spark of Sheikah magic, and she started. She smiled softly, her opportunity gone, and between the soft expression and the way she finally stopped trembling, he decided it was worth it.

She whispered, "Thank you."

And every nerve in his body felt set alight, because she had spoken those words for him, and no one else, and for just a moment, as his heart blazed, he imagined she could feel it in her chest, the way he could feel her heart in his.


	3. Chapter 3

**Three**

The princess adopted a peculiar habit after that.

She talked to him.

He never responded, of course, and it amounted to talking to herself for all the good it did her. But he hung on every word. She would talk about all the things she had done that day (and he would roll his eyes; as if he hadn't seen), and she would talk about all the things she would do tomorrow. She would tell him about the book she had just been reading, and the dreams she had had the night before—and about this tiresome, hermitish shadow that had been haunting her recently, and he would smirk from his hiding place.

"Lady Elana thinks you're a poe," she scoffed, tapping her pencil absently against the nearly blank page in her journal as she mulled. "But that's ridiculous. Poe's aren't nearly so coy as you are."

He leaned his head back against the wall and listened. Listened to the steady rhythm of her heart in his chest; to her calm, even breaths echoing cavernously through his mind; to the voice from his dreams, speaking words for no one to hear but him. Calling him coy.

"I think you're a Sheikah," she hummed, and his stomach hit the floor and his pulse hit the ceiling.

His chest ached from the dissonance of the his galloping heart against her soothing one. Why did she have to be so persistent? It had been _weeks _since she forced his hand in the plains, and he had done everything in his power to help her forget about him since—which mostly amounted to forcing himself to sit idly by and do absolutely nothing for her. And he knew it frustrated her. She would talk at him for an hour, and then wait, breath stilling, heart swelling, as she dared hope for a reply, or a sign. And he would disappoint her again and again.

And she had figured him out anyway.

"Legend says you're bound to one person for your entire life," she mused, her pencil beginning to move again, sketching something in the corner of the page he couldn't quite make out from where he had stationed himself—across from her, so he could watch her eyes. "But how does that work? You haven't been here my whole life. Did you have to wait until I reached a certain age, a certain landmark?" She paused, lips parting in thought. "Did I take you away from something else, a different life you would rather be living?"

She lifted her eyes from the page, scanning the room slowly. Waiting for an answer. They radiated a sudden, pensive concern. As though it had only just occurred to her that this arrangement might have been a sacrifice for him. The clock pendulum rocked noisily between its two extremes, counting the draining seconds. Of course he wouldn't rather be somewhere else. There was no peace without her now. He wanted to tell her, wanted to erase that troubled expression from her face.

He got up to pace, to think, and rubbed at the back of his neck. He stayed well outside the sphere of her candlelight as he circled the room, clinging to the shadows and soothing his raging thoughts with the steady echo of her breathing. When he rounded the back of the writing desk, he spied the sketch in her journal: the emblem of his people, carved into the page just as it was carved on his face.

"Do you have a name?"

He closed his eyes in the dark, listened to her heartbeat drowning out his own.

He had always heard it. He always would.

He snuffed out the candles, and she gasped—out of offense? frustration? delight?—and huffed, "I was using that."

She stood to light it again and he dove for the desk, pulse galloping, hands trembling as he picked up her pencil and broke the sacred rule—to remain a shadow, and only a shadow, to mind his place and to serve in silence and darkness for as long as he lived. He melted back against the wall when he was through, heart pounding so hard in his chest it rivaled hers. And he watched, rapt, as she lit the candle again with a sigh, scanning the room for signs of him and coming up empty.

Then she went back to her chair, fingers tracing the place in her book where, beneath the Sheikah Eye, he had written a name in the dark, and he watched her mouth form the word in a whisper.

"Link."


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: I usually try to respond to all my signed reviews, but I ran into not one but TWO signed reviews with private messages disabled, so I guess I'll respond here:_

_those-that-wander: Thank you! That's so kind! This will be relatively short all told, probably around 10k-15k words._

_Chicwa88: It's based on BotW as far as names, places, character traits, etc, but it's so AU that it doesn't matter too much. There isn't really a pre/post Calamity scenario here either, but I suppose, based on the way Hyrule looks in this story and who shows up along the way, you could call this a pre-Calamity setting._

_Thank you SO much to everyone who has taken the time to leave a review! Reviews are LIFE. Interaction is the whole reason writers share what they've written, so thank you for giving us a reason to keep sharing!_

**Four**

Zelda burst into her room when her day was done, pulling the curtains closed to blot out the last of the daylight, dragged the comforter off her bed to cocoon herself, and hurried to her writing desk to commence their latest ritual. It always made his heart throb and ache and speed in the worst ways. She set out her journal and her pencil and moved the candelabra to the edge of the desk, and he obliged her by smothering the light from the fireplace with his shadow magic.

And whenever he did that she would smile a private, hushed smile, because she knew he was listening. And it would make his pulse fly and a knot drop into the pit of his stomach. Because he loved it, and he knew he shouldn't have.

"Were you at dinner?" she asked the room, and she didn't flinch when the candles behind her suddenly went out.

She waited, perfectly still, listening to perfect silence, and then peered down at the journal when he lit the wicks again to see what he had written.

_Of course. You skipped dessert. You never skip dessert._

"It was taking too long. I had too much I wanted to ask you."

Another flicker of the lights. Another scrawl of words on the page.

_Fire away._

"How do you know who you're going to shadow?" she ventured, voice dropping closer to a whisper, as though she might be overheard. As though she knew she wasn't supposed to know what she was asking. But they were well beyond the bounds of what they were supposed to be doing. "Do you choose? Is it an assignment?"

It took a moment for the candles to go out. His palpable hesitation. When the lights came back, he had only written, _It's hard to explain._

"Oh, I see," she breathed, though it was clear she didn't. He huffed a world-weary sigh, shackled to her satisfaction, and put the candles out again.

_I've seen your face in my dreams for as long as I can remember. I felt your heartbeat beside mine, heard you breathing in the back of my mind, even when I was half a world away. I've always known I was meant to shadow you. I just didn't know who you were._

He watched her face as the lights came back, as she read, trying to gauge her reaction. But he was discovering that there was very little that could catch her truly by surprise, and even when something did it was almost always met with more delighted curiosity. Her brow pinched gently in thought as she processed.

"How did you find out it was me?"

_When we reach a certain age, we undergo a ritual. We choose to become a shadow or not._

"So you did choose this? To leave everything else behind?"

_I've never heard of someone not choosing it._

"That's amazing," she whispered, shaking her head gently. "I could never leave everything for someone I didn't even know."

_We live our lives knowing we were meant to do it. Do you doubt that you'll be queen one day?_

She scoffed. "That's different."

_Is it?_

She traced the words, tapping them pensively as she scanned the shadows again. Wondering where he might be. He could see that insatiable thirst for knowledge prowling in those glittering emerald eyes of hers, threatening to pry him out of his hiding place. He burned to challenge her, even though he suspected he would lose. _Because _he suspected he would lose.

"Why have I never heard your voice?"

_It's against the rules._

"'The rules,'" she hummed, smirking knowingly. "But writing me notes is allowed?"

The candles stayed lit for a long time as she backed him into a corner. Then,

_No._

Her smile was too pleased and too beautiful.

"Where does he draw the line? What rules will he break?" she speculated teasingly. "Would you kill for me?"

_I have killed for you._

That made her smile melt, the surprise he had thought so elusive finally alighting on her soft features. Lips parted, brow creased as she calculated, she finally murmured, "The West Quarter. That was selfish of me."

_Selfish?_

"I knew the Sheikah were protectors. I thought I could draw you out. I didn't realize I was meting out death sentences."

_They deserved it._

Her eyes flashed, full of the same discontent that would cross her face when she used to find lost things in obvious places. "We don't summarily execute criminals without a trial."

_And if I had waited until he had a knife across your neck? Would you think less harshly of me then?_

She didn't answer, frowning at the page, the long stretch of light and silence draining the life from their exchange like a noose.

_Have I angered you?_

"If I should be angry with anyone," she sighed, "it's myself."

The candlelight lingered, finally snuffing out with a flicker, as though from tremulous breath.

_I can't apologize for it. I would do it again._

She nodded pensively, sinking further into her blankets. "In your deepest parts, you're a soldier for the crown. Just one I can't control."

_And that bothers you._

For a moment she held her breath, and the void it left in his mind was deafening as a scream.

"I suppose it does."

He felt aflame and frozen solid at once, his blood chilling to a standstill in his veins.

_Then perhaps that's enough darkness for one night,_ he wrote, and fled back into the shadows as he called the candlelight and the fireplace back to full strength.

She knew what that meant. The conversation was over.

He watched her sigh, pull herself out of her blankets and drag the comforter back to her bed. He wanted to claw his own eyes out. It was the first time their illicit meetings had ever taken a turn towards the unpleasant, and the sensation made his teeth grind on themselves and his hands fist.

And maybe this was why they were never meant to speak. He could feel his peace, his good sense, being compromised by this gnawing regret. And he already feared what he might do to secure himself a place in her good favor again.

She washed up and dressed for bed, that pretty frown still turning her features down as she climbed beneath the blankets and snuffed out the lights. He lingered nearby in the darkness, ready to shield her from whatever the night might bring and aching at the few feet of distance separating them.

She whispered, "Are you still there?"

And, drawn to that quiet voice from his dreams, to that warm pulse in his chest, to that soft, troubled flurry of sighs passing through his mind, he drifted closer, eyes falling shut, and nearly touched his lips to her ear.

He whispered, "I'll always be with you."


	5. Chapter 5

**Five**

Serving the princess was becoming a game of compromise. And the princess didn't much care for compromise.

He preferred the dark, but she needed the heat. So he lit the fireplace, and she put up the screen. He wasn't supposed to speak, but she liked the sound of his voice. So she took to hiding all her notebooks and inks in locked drawers and pocketed the keys, and he talked. Which wasn't so much compromise as it was capitulation.

She seemed to like capitulation much better.

It was the winter solstice, and while this had most of the world in high spirits, Link had taken to grumbling. But the sun had gone down, and the snow flurries blanketing town were catching the lantern light, and Zelda just couldn't see his point of view.

"It's the shortest day of the year," she reasoned, fastening the clasps at the front of her cloak. "It's pitch black outside and it isn't even supper time. I would think a Shadow would be celebrating."

"It's nice for now," he groused. "But what's there to look forward to? Longer and longer days until the equinox, and then a gradual descent into imprisonment until the dead of summer, when the sun only goes down for a handful of hours—"

"Won't it be glorious?" she beamed, pulling her hood back and shaking her hair free. She turned back to the room with something between a scowl and a smile twisting at her lips, and for just a moment the bleak future that awaited him was forgotten. "Come on, Link. Celebrate with me tonight."

Her heart was speeding in his chest, betraying her excitement, and he could hardly say no to that. But he made a point of sighing loudly.

"Fine."

She leapt to her feet with what was very nearly a squeal and dashed for the door.

The streets were lined with lanterns, perched prettily atop the snow and casting rings of candlelight and shadow every few feet like a parade of bobbing, sunset-colored fairies. The square was full of bonfires, figuratively chasing away the night. There was hot cider and hot chocolate with Goron spice, sugarmakers pouring syrup over the snow and twisting it into taffy candies, and the smell of hot buttered apples wafting from cooking pots set up around the fountain. There were games to play, and when a familiar voice from amidst the throng of onlookers would urge her to _throw now_ or _aim for the red one_, she always listened.

But the princess didn't spend much time there. She knew it was too bright for him to stay close.

She followed the trail of lanterns up the hill again, lingering near the edge of the street instead of near its middle, where the lights and shadows crisscrossed and shuddered in patterns and colors she was convinced only ever existed on this night. She stepped off the road and leaned her shoulder into the brick of a quiet corner shop, closed a long time ago so its purveyor could secure a good spot in the square, and watched the festival twinkle below. She had two syrup taffies in her hands.

"Isn't it lovely?"

"There's a lot of shadows," he admitted grudgingly.

"Eat your taffy," she scoffed, tossing one into the shadows and then dutifully turning her back so he could retrieve it. She listened for him, but he never made a sound, even in the snow. It was gone when she finally checked again, and he hadn't left so much as a footprint. "It's lovely, and even you can't stay grumpy forever."

Link perched himself on the roof of the adjacent building, where the awning was casting a perfect veil for him, and tasted syrup taffy for the first time. It was strangely earthy and far too sweet.

"I don't understand this festival," he finally decided, rolling the taffy on the teeth.

"It's about banding together. Driving back the night. Celebrating longer days."

"Aren't you all getting a bit ahead of yourselves?"

She turned to smirk at him through the shadows, and though she couldn't have known, she met his eyes. It made his heart stammer.

"What about you?" she asked, green eyes sparkling in the snow and lantern light. "What would you like to do, on this shortest of days?"

"Exactly I am doing," he answered quietly. "Watching you."

"Babysitting me, more like," she scoffed. "Take a day off."

"You don't know what you're asking."

"I guess I don't." Wind snaked up the thoroughfare, spiraling in white trails of snow and stardust and pulling at her hood. She didn't right it when it slipped off her head. "Do you want some cider?"

"I don't know. I've never had cider."

A smirk was playing on her lips again. "I'm going to get you some."

Link sprang nimbly from rooftop to rooftop as she moved, shadowing her back towards the square, and watched from a distance as she meandered back into the lights. The fires blazed hot and bright, ringing her with orange light until all he could make out was her silhouette, reaching with willowy hands to take a steaming mug from a stallkeeper and dropping rupees into his hand. He stared after her when she left; starstruck, no doubt, or something like it. It wasn't every day the princess of Hyrule visited your shop, adorned with rosy cheeks and snow instead of her tiara, and asked to buy some cider.

She brought the cup to her mouth and breathed in the steam and spices as she left the square behind, the fires and lanterns dappling behind her like a spray of flickering stars, and he let himself get caught up in staring. She was cast in full antumbra. And it was lovely. It was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.

And then her breath yanked out of his chest, and her pulse spiked so hard he choked on it, and the cider spilled all over the snow. Another silhouette grappled with hers, pulling where he had her at the wrist and then at the throat of her cloak. Another shadow. The noise from the festival drowned out her cry, leaving only a few who turned at the sound, and they were too far away to be of any real assistance. But none of that was what truly pulled him from his hiding place. It was the fact that her scream had been his name.

Link was diving for her before he could think, before he could breathe, unsheathing his eightfold blade and shivering when it caught the firelight and gleamed in his hands.

An instant later there was blood spilled over the snow along with the cider, and he grabbed her hand and fled the bloom of the firelight. He dragged her through the alleys, through shadows and shadows and shadows until he found something deep enough to hide them both, and melted into it and pulled her back against him, gasping.

Both their hearts galloped in his chest. Her hands were clasped around his forearm where he was holding her across the shoulders, and he had his face pressed into the back of her neck, taking solace in more than her breathing and her heartbeat as he tried to catch his breath—taking solace in the feel of her in his hands, in the taste of her cool skin brushing his lips.

He couldn't stop shaking. Not just from the adrenaline of the battle, or the fact that his own lack of focus had put her in so much danger. But from the fact that he had broken the last binding rule, surged headlong into light and let himself be seen, and now touched and held and _felt_, and if she turned in his arms she would see more than they had seen, more than a blur of shadow rippling through a hazy bloom of firelight.

But she held still, her breath and her pulse calming long before his. For the first time in a long time, his breath, his heart, threatened to drown her out. He dropped his hands, suddenly, panicking, remembering himself, realizing what he had done. And she was stone still, giving him time to hide.

But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He couldn't bring himself to leave her, to deny himself the assurance that she was fine and she was _here_, by stepping away. And then, realizing her hadn't gone and curious, electrified, burning to know his face, she steeled herself with a breath and slowly turned around.

Their eyes met in the dark, his two shades darker than blood, and hers the glittering emerald of a forest. Her fingers, still warm from the mug of cider, lifted to trace the scar on his left eye, the triangles etched into his brow and the teardrop beneath. If she could see the terror in them, she didn't say.

She whispered, "Link."

He never thought he would run from anyone, least of all her.

But he ran from her then.


	6. Chapter 6

**Six**

Link stared at the body a long time, his knotted hands pressed against his forehead. It made his blood boil and his gut drop. But at least it explained why he hadn't seen it coming, why it had been so close…

Her assailant had been Yiga.

He sighed, sending the corpse down with a wave of his hand, beneath the snow, beneath the earth, back into shadow where it belonged. In the quiet of the alley, he listened for her heartbeat. She was still awake. It was agitated, too loud for her to be at rest. She was probably pacing.

He glanced up at the castle tower, to the room with the drawn curtains where he knew she was waiting. His ribs were already aching from the distance. It hurt to breathe.

It was well into the wee hours of the morning, and most of the lanterns had gone out. The festival fires were burning down, the children were asleep, and the sugarmakers and stallkeepers had gone home. A few stayed behind by the embers—lovers tangled in each other's arms, cheeks tinged pink from the cold and from stolen kisses, and loners drowning their sorrows in grog. No one who would notice a shadow covering blood in the snow at the edge of the light.

He scaled the tower and waited atop her spire. But even as the dark of the solstice night began to pale into dawn, she still hadn't fallen asleep. He meant to stay hidden, meant to sever all the inappropriate ties he had made, meant to retreat back over all the lines he had crossed. But he was already crumbling. He finally slipped into her window, shifting along the edge of her room with the shadows cast by the single chamberstick still lit at its center, nearly burned down to nothing. Her shallow breath sounded through his head, short and uneven. Her heart throbbed an uncomfortable staccato. He hoped, if he made himself known, she might finally drift off for a few hours. So he snuffed out the light.

Zelda sat bolt upright with a gasp, clutching a dagger to her breast, her pulse spiking painfully in his throat and her breath shuddering taut and sharp through his mind, and he reached out to steady himself against the wall. She was terrified. Because she had seen what it was that attacked her, and she hadn't been listening for him at all. She had been listening for one of them.

He swallowed his pride with a stab of guilt and moved closer.

"It's me," he murmured. "It's only me."

Her shoulders slumped, and she dropped the dagger into her lap with a shaky, hollow sigh and bowed her head. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I shouldn't have looked."

He swallowed. "What's done is done. It wasn't your fault. It was mine."

He waited, perfectly still, perfectly silent, watching her wipe tears off her cheek with her wrist.

"I thought you wouldn't come back—that I had made you too angry, or forced your hand somehow. But I promise I won't look again. I didn't have the right."

A stone lodged in his throat just above his heart. That had been careless. Of course she might have thought that. How was she to know that he could no more live without her than he could stomach tearing his own arm off? He rounded her bed, beating back his cowardice, and sat on the edge of the mattress. His scarred eye caught the glow of the fireplace.

"I told you I would always be with you," he whispered, and waited until her eyes, hesitant, darting over the quilts, tentatively met his. "Nothing will ever change that. There is no peace without you now."

She nodded, her gaze flickering anxiously back to the blankets between them, and he frowned.

"I didn't mean to scare you."

"You didn't." Then she kneaded her hands, sighing, and admitted, "You did. But I deserved it."

His mouth twisted.

"Come with me," he said, taking her fingers in his, feather-soft, heart pounding, and led her out of bed and across the room.

She knelt where he directed, and he pulled the screen down, letting the orange splash of the fire flood the hearth and everything beyond, and crouched in its glow. Her timidity was quickly forgotten then, desire drowning out fear, eyes stealing glances at his until they were glued, transfixed by their color and their warmth out of shadow. He took her wrist and led her fingertips back to his scar. His pulse was flying.

She was breathless. "You don't mind?"

"I don't mind."

She bit her lip softly, giving in to that insatiable curiosity he knew so well, tracing the marks she couldn't possibly have known had been carved into his flesh for her. He turned into her touch, hiding in the shadow of her hand, trembling from so much light.

"I'm sorry I ran," he murmured, but all seemed forgiven. She had moved on to running her fingers through his argent hair. And instead of reveling in it he took the opportunity to broach another unpleasant subject, like an idiot. "Do you know the Yiga?"

Her lips twitched, hand falling from his bangs to trace at nothing on the floor.

"Just stories," she whispered. "They say they lurk in shadow. But no one believes in them, anymore than they believe in Sheikah."

"They're traitors. They shadow to kill rather than protect. And they don't give up easily."

"There will be more of them."

"Yes."

She drifted closer, pensive, and he shifted to sit cross-legged. She didn't seem worried. Not that he had been trying to frighten her, exactly. But it baffled him. It filled him with heat that had nothing to do with the fire blazing beside him.

"I'm leaving in the morning," he admitted, finally, forcing himself to meet her eyes. "I need to tell the others that there was a Yiga here. They'll want to send more Sheikah back with me, give you the protection you need while this plays out."

Her lips twisted. "That doesn't sound very pleasant."

"It's going to lead to a small war inside your bedroom."

"But it's for the best?"

He nodded.

"And you'll be there?"

He mustered a pithy smile. "I'll be there."

She studied him, green eyes glittering in the firelight like a sea bathed in sunset.

"Things will change," she mused quietly. "I'm not supposed to know you exist."

"No," he agreed, "you're not."

Then she tilted her head at him, thinking, her hair sliding prettily off her shoulder, and suddenly all he could think of was the way the soft skin on the back of her neck had tasted against his lips.

"Why do you break so many rules for me?"

He propped an elbow on his knee and pressed his mouth into his palm. "I can't seem to help it."

"And if the others ever found out?" she posed. "Then what?"

"I honestly don't know."

She slipped into a spell of silence he decided he didn't much care for, eyes drifting to the fire in thought, and he sighed.

"You should try to sleep. You might be able to get a few hours in yet."

She scoffed, rolling her eyes at him. "You're being ridiculous."

"I'll stay. You'll be safe."

"But you're leaving in the morning, and I have no idea when I'll see you again."

"You'll hardly notice."

And then her brow puckered, eyes glistening too bright in the splash of the fire, and she whispered, "How can you say that?"

He tried to swallow a lump the size of his fist and couldn't quite manage it.

"I'm just a shadow, princess," he whispered.

"But you're _my _shadow," she smiled sadly, reaching to trace his scars again with a touch soft as breath, and something in his chest pulled and tightened that was neither of their heartbeats.

He leaned close in that pale stillness, stamping down the last bit of good sense he had left as he quivered in the pleasure of hearing her say that he was _hers_. He listened to her breath catch in his mind, to her heart slow. He slid a warm hand behind her neck and watched her eyes slip shut. And then he pressed his lips unrepentantly to hers, and the fire in the hearth was instantly in his blood.

It was firm and quiet as these things went, a rigid, desperate relay of intent, full to bursting with restraint, like they were both afraid the overload if either of them dared to taste or touch would be too much. It was the softest, sweetest kind of prison, and when he pulled away too soon after they were left aching and wanting so much more. He swept his thumb along her jaw in the breathlessness that followed and her heart burst from a standstill to a sprint, and feeling her react and knowing it was because of _him_ sent a shiver down his spine.

"But isn't this—?"

"Very," he breathed, leaning in again, already lost to her, already drunk on the promise of her lips, and listened to every sound she made reverberate ten times over in his mind. "Very forbidden."


	7. Chapter 7

**Seven**

They stayed by the fire, feeling, tasting, committing to memory, eyes open, eyes shut, and then her shadow slipped from her arms with the sunrise.

The castle had never felt so much like a cage. And if the castle was her prison, the sun was her warden, and she couldn't fathom how it could possibly crawl so slowly by on what was ostensibly the second shortest day of the year. But she was determined to not let the day go to waste.

She scoured the castle library for everything she hadn't already read on Sheikah, and Yiga, and any other mention of shadows, and when she finished whatever she could get her hands on she went back and pored over the towers of books she had already read and reread and dogeared into submission.

The Sheikah were ancient. Legend said they had served the royal family for thousands of years, that they were agents of the white goddess, sworn to protect her people forever. In some of the books they were powerful magic wielders, protecting the doors to the House of the Dead and serving openly in the royal house; in others they were master builders, crafting towers and weapons and machines that defied imagination; sometimes they were creatures of the dark, lingering in eternal shadow, watching over Hyrule out of a single, great eye that never closed.

She found one story, amidst the fairy tales, of a girl who fell in love with a shadow. It didn't end well.

There was much less reference to the Yiga. They were bloodthirsty creatures that looked like men but that were shadows beneath, full of teeth and bone and a single, bloody eye, that hunted at night and burned alive in direct sunlight. Embellishment, resulting from tales retold too many times, too far removed from witnesses, like so many things. Or at least, that was her theory.

Link had called them traitors. She suspected that they must have been Sheikah, once, as well. And the idea that it could be one of _them _hunting her now was much more unsettling than any of the myths.

She slid a book emblazoned with a great red eye under her arm and climbed one of the ladders, and began the arduous process of putting everything away.

When she retired to her room that night, nothing seemed to have changed. The fire crackled on the hearth, moonlight spilled in through the part in the curtains, and her brushes and hairpins were still strewn over the dresser. For a moment she wondered if he had even come back. But she had to trust that he had.

She changed into her nightclothes, crawled into bed, and waited for war.

She wondered how many Sheikah could practically be stationed around her then. A dozen at most, she would have thought, but she really didn't have the data needed to speculate. Link seemed to be able to all but melt into a shadow if he so chose. She wondered which shadow he was hiding in now. She closed her eyes and didn't let herself look.

The night dragged on, and nothing happened. After hours of lying there, burning like a live wire, she finally drifted off, and in the morning the room was as unchanged as it had been when she arrived.

It was the same thing the next night, and the night after that. A long, awful waiting game, trapped in a vortex of questions she wasn't allowed to ask.

It was a week before she stopped obsessing over it, resigned to the fact that it would take as long as it would take, and that she would just have to be patient. She finally went to bed without a racing heart and without intending to stay alert for as long as possible, listening for clues. She finally let her guard down.

Perhaps that was _why _they chose that night to strike.

The flames on the hearth fluttered sideways, throwing shadows and lights on the ceiling. A rush like a draft passed over her cheek, even though the window was shut tight. Something dark moved out of the corner of her eye.

She sat bolt upright, heart hammering, too startled to play oblivious. There were no clanging swords, no sounds of struggle or battle cries. But she felt all the urgency of war. The penumbra on the ceiling shuddered in too many patterns, and wind birthed of nothing passed too frequently over her skin. She heard the gentlest noise, soft as breath, and when she snapped her head towards it there was a forbidding spatter on the carpet.

Then the hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and when she raised her eyes there was something darker than night staring back at her out of the shadows.

A glare of light snapped across the darkness with a quiet hush of metal, and the mattress depressed around her, and then lips pressed softly, fleetingly, against her shoulder blade, and a familiar voice whispered in her ear, _Stay down_.

Tears slipped down her cheeks in relief. The others would probably think they were from fear. All the better. Anyone would have noticed the strange happenings and felt haunted. She resisted the urge to answer, burying herself back in the pillows, and she turned over and pulled the blankets higher, like a child afraid of the dark. But she kept one eye on the ceiling, watching the shadows spray and weave over the firelight like a violent dance, and one hand pressed into the bed, feeling for the shifting weight of the shadow watching over her, shielding her from harm with his life.

The war didn't stop raging, but somehow—through sheer exhaustion or some kind of shadow magic, she didn't know—her heart gradually slowed again, and she was asleep long before the sun rose.

In the morning all was still. The stains on the floor were gone. Nothing was out of place—except the quill in its pedestal was turned the wrong way, but who besides her would ever notice such a detail? Everything had gone back to the way it was.

Surely they had won. Or maybe they took some sort of recess when the sun came up? If he was at liberty to do so, she was sure he would have spoken to her. So for whatever reason, they weren't alone. Or maybe he had left, escorting the rest of them back wherever they came from.

She sighed into the empty room. She hated not knowing.

She burned her way through the day, hoping he would speak to her in the evening.

He didn't. And there was no sign of another battle, either.

The night after was silent again, and the night after that. Perhaps they were just being cautious. Perhaps they were anticipating another attack. She tried not to be impatient. She tried to believe that he was doing what had to be done to ensure her safety.

Two weeks later, she started breaking the rules, tempting him out, just so she would know he was still there. She left out notebooks and inks, she 'accidentally' left candles lit from time to time, she lamented aloud about hair clips and bracelets that she had painstakingly placed so they would eventually slip behind her dresser.

Still nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

But she couldn't expose him. So she tried to get on with her life until he made himself known.

She read other books. She spent more time at court, and at parties. She pursued her studies again with a fervor she hadn't had in weeks. She got back into drawing and embroidery. She was better about hosting guests and envoys and responding to letters. She planned a trip to Zora's Domain once the thaw set in. And when Lady Elena asked after her 'poe friend' when her ladies came to visit she laughed and said he had gone quiet as the grave. Then she dropped her face into her arms on her desk when they had all left and cried, and didn't care if there were any shadows left in her room to watch.

Before she knew it, the equinox had come and gone.

It was late spring. The blossoms had all fallen, making way for verdant new leaves as the air hinted at warm summer days. The sun lingered on the horizon later and later, pushing back the night. She didn't mind so much anymore.

Winter seemed so far behind her.

It had been nearly half a year. She had gone to Zora's Domain to celebrate the Thaw, and danced with every eligible courtier at the spring ball, and chosen a new filly to have groomed for her use when she was old enough. And it wasn't so much that she had forgotten the winter, and the shadows, not really. It was more that she hadn't let herself dwell.

What was the point of dwelling on something she couldn't change?

She glanced down at her feet when she kicked something beside her dresser and scoffed at herself. It was one of the bracelets she had purposefully lost in an attempt to draw him out. The maids had been all about her furniture doing a thorough spring cleaning the day before. She picked it up and put it back in her jewelry box without much thought.

And then the next day, in the same place, she nearly stepped on a hair clip.

She stooped to pick it up, and her heart stammered in her throat as she held the little piece, its tiny crust of gemstones glinting in the candlelight. Then, loosing a shuddering breath, she steeled herself and set out a notebook and ink before she went to bed for the night.

In the morning, the pages were blank. She snapped the notebook shut and berated herself for being so stupid.

But she couldn't stop thinking about it, even as she smiled her way through an uneventful week, full of uneventful studies and uneventful social engagements and uneventful evenings in her room. Why would he leave them out for her, but not write in her book? Why hadn't he produced those trinkets months ago, when it would have _mattered_? She tried not to think of the shadow she hadn't seen since the solstice. She tried desperately not to think at all.

And then, sitting at her desk one night, a flicker of more gemstones, peeking out from the dresser, caught more firelight and her eye. She sighed, frowning at it.

"You're not Link," she decided quietly, "are you?"

She counted her heartbeats, one, two, three.

Nothing.

Then she stood, addressing the room with all the dignity she had left.

"If the legends are true, and you serve the royal family, then you are bound to my law," she charged. "I demand you come out of the shadows at once."

The room was still for so long she thought her gamble was wasted. She scarcely dared to breathe. But then, emerging from the dark so slowly it almost seemed an illusion, three unfamiliar figures stepped out of shadow into the edge of light.

They pressed a hand to their hearts and bowed, and the breath fell from her lungs. They were so familiar, so like him in many ways: crimson eyes, stark, silvery hair, and clothes the color of summer midnight with bronze spaulders and greaves.

"Three of you," she mused, arching a slender brow. "I'm sure I should be honored."

"We are not Shadows, princess, and could not hope to replace one," the closest Sheikah, a woman, said levelly. "And these are unusual circumstances."

Any hopes Zelda had of intimidating her with a show of self-possession were soundly dashed. She didn't doubt she would hold her ground against a charging lynel. But she wouldn't let herself show weakness. Not for a moment.

"I see. And where is my Shadow now?"

"With the Sheikah," she answered, too quietly. "In the shadows, where he belongs."

Zelda set her jaw, swallowing fear.

"Take me to him," she ordered simply.

The Sheikah exchanged unhappy glances, but she didn't waver. Finally, the Sheikah woman said, "Very well."

She offered her hand, and Zelda took it, letting herself be pulled toward shadow.

And suddenly, she couldn't stop thinking about the fairy tale—about the Hylian girl who stumbled upon her shadow lover in the woods, drenched in his own blood, and the shadows who had stepped out from amongst the trees and warned her never to love one of them again.


	8. Chapter 8

**Eight**

The woman's name was Impa.

The other two were her older sister, Purah, and another Sheikah warrior named Robbie. They moved fluidly through darkness, as though they were a part of it, melting into shadow so thoroughly she would have lost track of them if not for their grip on her hand. But she had long since stopped worrying about making her own way. Trying to maintain any semblance of control at all had seemed ridiculous after they formed a chain on her tower wall and lowered her from her balcony in a series of death-defying drops.

They led her out of the castle, out of town, deep into Hyrule, and into the passes. Then, murmuring apologies, they put her in a blindfold, and led her slowly past roaring water, through cool alcoves, and finally down, down into places that tasted of moss and earth and stone. What felt like hours later, they took off the mask.

"Give her the torch," Impa said, wrapping the cloth up in her hand as Zelda tried to blink her eyes into focus. But it was just too dark.

A moment later a tiny spark had caught, splashing firelight over the cavern. But the light was dimmer than it ought to have been. The shadows were much stronger here. Purah took her hand and pressed the torch into it, sighing, and frowned at her sister.

"This is not a good idea."

"Well, I'm not the one that exposed us, am I?"

"It's not _right_," Robbie bit out, and Impa leveled a glare at him.

"That isn't for us to decide," she countered, and then turned into the dark. "Follow close, princess."

Zelda frowned, unnerved by the exchange, and fell in line with Robbie as they navigated the path, chiseled out of the earth so long ago that Hyrule seemed to have grown up over it. The light grew less and less potent the deeper they went, barely strong enough to illuminate their faces and her own feet. The shadows seemed able to banish the light in this world, much as light could banish shadow in hers.

"What isn't right?" she asked him, quietly, after a while. But he shook his head.

"People fear change," he murmured. "They cling to archaism because it gives them the illusion of security. But change is inevitable. And punishing someone for heralding it is foolish."

Impa shot him another glare from the front of the line, and Zelda decided it was better not to press him.

When her legs were jelly and her lungs burned and she thought she might collapse if they took another step, they finally stopped to rest. She propped the torch against a rock and huddle close to it. It had gotten colder as they descended, and she hadn't thought to grab a warmer cloak before they left. At the edge of the light Impa and Purah were locked in a hushed debate. Robbie came up beside her and handed her a canteen.

She drifted closer, watching the other two sidelong. "Why are they arguing?"

"They're sisters," he snorted. "They're always arguing."

She smiled politely, taking a long drink, and pressed her mouth into her hand. "But what about?"

His mouth twitched in thought as he took the canteen back.

"Impa is a traditionalist," he finally murmured. "She believes in upholding the way of things, even if it goes against her judgment. I disagree, in case you hadn't noticed. And Purah, well." He loosed a long breath out his nose. "She sees merit in both sides."

Zelda sighed knowingly. "You were the one who moved the jewels for me to find."

He nodded, crimson eyes flickering away from hers and down to the dirt. A look of shame if she had ever seen one. "It wasn't a decision I made lightly."

"Thank you," she murmured, "for being brave enough to do this."

"Thank you," he countered, smirking, "for being brave enough to take the bait."

She smiled gently, too, studying his face in the torchlight. Though all Sheikah seemed to share certain traits, he was otherwise quite different from Link: sturdy-looking and square-jawed, and his hair insisted on standing up in all directions.

She touched her face indicatively, just above her cheekbone. "You don't have the mark."

His brow scrunched. "Why would I?"

"I don't know. I thought all Sheikah would have it."

"He didn't tell you?"

"I never asked."

He snorted, shaking his head.

"No. It's a Shadow thing. The Elders carve it into their face with a knife when they go through the rite," he said, gesturing vaguely towards his eye. "That way, if one of them ever goes crazy, we'll know why."

She swallowed, afraid to ask. But she did. "'Goes crazy'?"

"Yeah," he murmured, "without the Peace."

Purah stomped over then, crouching in their light, and growled, "Remind me, the next time I'm going to do something that's going to get me an earful of Impa's rhetoric, that I'd rather gnaw my own wrists off."

Robbie thrummed his knuckles together, offering her a sympathetic smile. "She means well."

She scoffed. "Since when are you the voice of reason?"

"Since when do you side with me?"

"I said we should do _something_," she huffed. "I didn't mean bring a princess of Hyrule into the depths of Kakariko." Then she shrugged a shoulder at her and amended, "Sorry."

Zelda waved her hand gently to assure her there was no offense. Impa, sitting further down the cavern, a blur of shadow in deeper shadow, sighed into nothing.

They set off again once she had rested. The torch was all but useless by the time they reached their destination: a great, broad stone masking the path. It was emblazoned with a single, ever-watchful eye.

Impa pressed her palms to its surface and leaned close, whispering words Zelda couldn't hear. Then the stone split down its middle with a muted crack, rending the eye in two, and the door slid apart.

They trailed inside, and the torch went out.

Purah took her hand, murmuring instructions as she led her down ancient, worn steps, over a wide stone table, and through more doorways. And then, all at once, a shiver ran down her spine, and Zelda knew they weren't alone.

"Welcome, Your Highness," came a voice from behind—an old woman's voice, infused with the sort of composure that could only come with age, and that was uniquely suited to the dark.

She turned blindly towards it. "You know me?"

She laughed very quietly. "Yes, princess. We know who you are."

"Then you no doubt know why I've come," she said.

The answering silence nearly drained her of her nerve. Then, soft as moonlight, hazy as water, a blue glow breathed to life out of strange patterns etched in the walls. It lit the old woman's face, and the faces of a dozen other Sheikah listening from the sidelines.

"This is highly unorthodox," was all she said. Then her eyes slid to the three Sheikah warriors standing at her back. "Who is responsible for this?"

"I am, Elder," Robbie said, stepping forward, and though his posture was strong, she could see the tension running down his neck.

She appraised him quietly before turning her gaze on the other two. "And you were complicit."

Purah frowned. But Impa, the woman who would stare down charging lynels, didn't defend herself. She merely bowed her head, yielding to the Elder's judgment. And that was when Zelda knew this would come down to a battle of wills.

"I've come to see my Shadow," she announced, pulling herself a full inch taller.

She expected more a fight than she got.

"Very well," she said, bowing her head. Bowing to the royal family all Sheikah had sworn to serve. "But he cannot return with you."

She turned, stepping down from the dias they all stood on and leading her through the oversized chamber to a doorway in the wall. Zelda passed an inquiring glance at Robbie; he nodded. So she followed.

The Elder waited for her in the dim corridor beyond the door. The blue light glowed there, too, out of circles placed every few steps along the walls in varying sizes. She doubted they needed them. They must have been for guests.

She suspected they didn't get many of those.

"I must warn you, Your Highness," the Elder sighed as they walked, "you may not like what you see."

Her stomach clenched, but she didn't let it color her voice. "Why? What have you done to him?"

"Very little. Merely forbid him from returning to your world." She paused, thoughtful, and glanced at her sidelong. "He agreed to it, you know. To return for judgment after the Yiga were driven back."

Zelda could hardly stop the words from bubbling to her mouth. It was stubbornness she inherited from her father. "Is what he has done really so wrong?"

The old woman scoffed. "A Shadow who makes himself known is not a shadow at all."

"And for that you punish him?"

"No one has broken the sacred rule for a thousand years," she mused bitterly. "And now it is broken not once, but twice."

Zelda offered, her expression twisting softly, "Change is inevitable."

The Elder passed her a wry smile.

"Perhaps."

They descended _more _stairs—how much farther beneath the earth could they possibly go?—and then stopped at another alcove. The passage was covered by rippling, gauzy cloth that glittered in the blue glow. The Elder gestured, and she stepped inside.

And lying on the floor, listless, trembling and feverish, eyes unseeing, his shallow breaths echoing through the empty chamber and his bent form alight in the glow, was her shadow.


	9. Chapter 9

**Nine**

Zelda felt leaden, bones cast in metal and flesh going cold. She stroked his face, gently coaxing him back towards lucidity. But she couldn't reach him. He just stared and trembled and hissed between her hands.

"What's happened to him?" she asked, only circumspectly aware of her own voice.

"A Shadow without its host is not whole," the Elder answered thoughtfully, peering through the filmy curtain. "Give it time. He will get used to it soon."

She turned numbly. "Used to what?"

"The Peace," she said simply, and then stepped away and into shadow.

She moved once they were alone, shaken, ignoring the frightened tears skipping down her face, and gathered him up in her arms. She pressed her face to his ear and one of his hands to her heart, letting him feel, letting him listen.

"Come on, Link," she whispered, forcing herself to breathe. "Come back."

His eyes were dead. He shivered, taking a quiet, full breath in tandem with one of hers. And then, a minute later, another. She pressed her mouth closer to his ear and breathed slower.

He had been so strong before, so vibrant, and mischievous, and stealthy, and _warm_. Now he couldn't hold still. His body was limp in her arms and trembling all over. It seemed to hurt him just to breathe.

And she had been licking her wounds these last five months, thinking herself jilted, while he had been trapped here. Languishing from the separation. Suffering, because he had chosen to let them carve an emblem into his face for her, and then traded his cooperation for her safety.

His fingers flexed on her tunic, digging towards her heartbeat, and she wrapped her hand around his neck, urging him closer.

"That's it," she praised him softly. "Just listen."

His eyes rolled shut with a sigh, and his breathing gradually started to level, coming more regularly, more deeply, until it was in perfect sync with hers. It should have been unnerving. But it wasn't. It felt natural. It felt like she was meant to breathe for both of them.

After a long time he finally shivered again, sucking a breath that rolled through his whole body, and his eyes startled open. They found hers, and slowly went wide as saucers.

"Zelda," he whispered, disbelieving, trembling—followed closely by, "Oh, no."

She frowned. "What?"

"This can't be real," he murmured, reaching weakly to trace her jaw. "I must be losing my mind."

"I _am _real," she assured him quietly. "I'm here, in Kakariko."

"No you're not. But it doesn't matter. I'll take what I can get."

She smiled weakly, too relieved that he was at least coherent to be flustered, and leaned into his touch. "Isn't there anything I can do to convince you?"

His lips quirked as his eyes roved, admiring her, the way he had brought her to life in such perfect detail. "Nothing comes to mind."

Well, she wasn't so devoid of imagination.

"I'm real," she whispered, drifting closer, eyes fixed on his mouth, lingering in the anticipation of it until she finally captured his lips in a kiss that was so much sweeter than she remembered.

But when she pulled away his smile was gone. A crease formed in his brow, and she was suspended in his sudden tension. He whispered, swallowing, "That's real."

She nodded, breathless. And all at once his hands were on her neck, and he was drinking her and tasting her and breathing her in, desperate to be as close to her as he could, and he was shaking—not because his body had given out, but because she was _here_, and that thrilled him and terrified him in equal measure.

"You're real," he gasped haggardly, chanting it to himself like a prayer as he pressed his forehead to hers and breathed, his mouth hovering, open and needy and warm, over hers. "You're real. How are you here? _Why _are you here? You should have—forgotten me—"

"I tried," she admitted bitterly. "Believe me, I tried. I was so angry. I thought you left me—"

She bit down on nothing, and his hands flexed on her arms. But neither of them had the energy to waste on regrets. His eyes were open, red as blood, staring, as though she might up and disappear if he took his eyes off her.

Finally, she whispered, "Robbie helped me."

His lips twitched knowingly. "Robbie. Of course."

"How do you feel?" she whispered, gripping him tighter as another shudder coursed all through him. "Are you in any pain?"

"No, no," he assured her, a little breathless, one hand lifting to thread in her hair, touch her, reassure himself she was real. "I'm just… not used to having you so close."

She nodded, trying to breathe, and he laced his fingers in hers. She led him closer, alight, tentative, and pressed his palm deep against her heart, and his eyes fluttered closed, an unfiltered smile blossoming on his mouth.

"You have no idea how amazing that feels."

Her stomach filled with butterflies, and she had an inkling.

And then his smile twisted into something less glorious, something smaller and grudging, and he pressed his forehead to hers again, cradling her with his free hand, and said, more loudly, "If you're going to stand out in the hallway eavesdropping, you might as well come in."

She turned, thinking the Elder was about to interrupt them (and more than a little aghast that Link would talk to her that way), but it was her Sheikah companions who barged in instead.

"Well if Robbie wasn't such a _mouth-breather_—"

"You've been tapping your foot for twenty minutes! If he heard anyone, it was you!"

"I didn't think Sheikah made sounds," Zelda murmured to him wryly, and Link kissed her temple.

"They're not supposed to."

Robbie offered Link his hand and helped him to his feet, pulling him into a hug that could only be described as bone-crushing. His voice was thick. "You scared me, you idiot."

He let him go, and Link patted the side of his face, smirking. "I know. Sorry."

"And now he's gone and gotten himself into the same trouble, and dragged us into it, too," Purah scoffed, shoving Robbie aside so she could replace him. She smiled when she pulled away, and stepped aside.

Finally Impa, who had been trailing them in silence, stood before him. She took him in a moment, jaw set in that rigid way it usually was. And then she stepped closer, encircling him in a much softer, much more relieved embrace than the others had. It was more intimate somehow. Like the embrace of a mother and child. Or lovers.

She whispered, "I'm glad you're all right."

"You didn't have to do this," he told her quietly as they parted.

She mustered a wistful smile. "It wasn't my idea."

It was strange, though she supposed it really shouldn't have been, to see him in this context: surrounded by familiarity, and the suggestion of a past, and long, deep friendships. It would have been outrageously selfish to deny him any of those things, of course; but she had only ever known him when his life revolved obsessively around her. And for the first time she felt like an outsider looking in.

She took a sudden inventory of her breathing and heart rate, wondering if the unpleasant spiral of her thoughts had given her away, but before she could attempt to cover it over he was reaching for her. He gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze, and then his head tilted and his expression turned somber.

"When's the last time you slept?"

"I don't remember," she shrugged, and he turned his steely gaze on the others.

"When's the last time you gave her something to eat?"

"Typical Shadow," Purah sighed hotly, turning to lead the way. "No 'So good to see you too,' or 'Thanks for risking your necks to save me from my own horrible decisions,' just a lot of attitude for not doing his job as well as he would have!"

Robbie smirked at him. "She doesn't mean that."

"Yes I do!"

By unspoken agreement Link wrapped his arm around Zelda's neck as they trailed behind the three of them, leaning on her for support, and he kissed her hair when they weren't looking.

They followed the smooth corridor away from the branching arms of the antechamber, down through what felt more like streets than hallways, down into larger caverns, and she felt the dew and heard the sigh of running water. It went dark again as they left the hazy blue lights behind, the path only illuminated by natural bioluminescence—veins of foxfire and shroom caps, and the radiant algae clinging to the stone behind the waterfalls and trembling, anchored, in the rivers. The tallest waterfall cascaded from such a height she could only guess at how tall it was, its cloud of mist refracting the algae light and casting a soft hue over the cavern. The floor was peppered with dark, curved silhouettes that glistened with spray, like whitecaps in a black, foamy sea.

It was a Sheikah village.

Link shifted his arm from off her neck to lead her up a set of stairs and into one of the houses. The beams felt silken under her fingers, bent into strong, sweeping shapes that was so unlike the boxy architecture she was used to. Inside, more circles embedded in the glossy walls breathed to life and bathed the room in a soft glow. It was a simple room, with a ring of cushions and an orb sunk into the floor at its center. For congregating, perhaps, or sharing stories.

The four of them saw to her needs so quickly it was almost disconcerting: Link led her to a zabuton, and nearly as soon as she had sat down she had a warm bowl of soup in her hands, a blanket draped over her shoulders, and Robbie was crouching beside her, breathing on the orb the way she might breathe on kindling. Soon it was radiating more heat.

Then Impa gestured Link into the next room, and he frowned.

He murmured, "I'll be back."

Zelda forced herself to sit still and eat her soup. In the shadows beyond the doorway, she could hear them arguing in hushed tones. Robbie mustered a smile.

"It's good to see him back to his old self."

She raised her eyebrows in brooding agreement, bringing another spoonful to her lips. Her soup glowed with a trail of bluish particles whenever the utensil troubled the broth. It wasn't offputting, exactly, but other things had already quelled her appetite, and it was the last straw. She dropped the spoon with a sigh.

"How did it even come to this?" she asked, incredulous. "How could they do this to him?"

"You're asking two very different questions, and neither are as clear cut as you think," Purah interrupted as Robbie searched for the words to answer, plopping down beside her. "If you're asking how his secret got out, it was sort of inevitable. Putting that much distance between you when he came back to ask for help basically crippled him. He could hardly tell us what was wrong."

"They used a Seer," Robbie interjected, gesturing quietly towards the door. "Looked into his mind for answers. Got more than they bargained for, I think."

That… sounded complicated. She put her bowl down and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, thinking. "And as for the other?"

Robbie sighed, but it was Purah who answered.

"He exposed us," she murmured. "Our secrecy has kept us protected for hundreds of years. There's a reason Sheikah only exist as legends in your world anymore."

"But even then we don't resort to torturing our own," Robbie spat, fixing her in a glare, and Zelda got the distinct impression the two of them had had this conversation before.

"In theory," Purah tried to ignore him, "forbidding a Sheikah from going back to Hyrule isn't much of a punishment at all—"

"But he's a _Shadow_," Robbie batted back, and turned his gaze back on Zelda. "They knew this would happen to him if they kept him from you. The magic binding you together is too strong."

Purah threw her hands up and got to her feet. "And he knew why the rule existed! I'm not saying that what's happening to him is fair, Robbie, but he's hardly innocent!"

She stormed outside before he could manage the apology that seemed to bubble to his lips. He rubbed at his forehead, sighing again, and Zelda fidgeted.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start an argument."

"You didn't," he assured her. "It's been ongoing for weeks." He gestured towards the next room, where Impa and Link were still locked in whispered debate. "It's still ongoing."

"You all care about him a lot," she mused, marshalling a very small smile. "I can tell."

"We grew up together," he shrugged. "Trained together. That sort of thing forges bonds not easily broken. Which I suppose is the whole point."

She reached for her soup again, stirring it around to hide her disquiet as she pried. "What about Impa? Were they ever… involved?"

He snorted. "No. Maybe, if things had been different. But he's a Shadow. He spends his nights dreaming about someone else."

Somehow that didn't make her feel any better. She tried to shove her petty jealousy aside and focus on the task at hand.

"There's a lot I don't understand about you as a people, so please don't think me brazen for even asking this," she hedged quietly, and he nodded. "What did you hope to accomplish by bringing me here? Were you planning on helping Link escape? Or am I supposed to try to influence your Elders into letting him go?"

"No, no," he dismissed her quickly. "If he tried to escape, he'd be run down, and then we would really have a problem. And I'm not sure our Elders can be influenced, even by you. I didn't have a plan. But I couldn't stand idly by and do nothing anymore. I just wanted him to have a moment's peace."

She stared at her soup, something cold and unpleasant gnawing at her insides as she spiraled towards a dark conclusion. "And when I have to leave? What happens then?"

"Things go back to the way they were."

"I hardly recognized him," she whispered, shuddering at the memory, and Robbie sighed.

"You don't know the half of it."

Her eyes were on him again, searching, sifting through him for the truth. "What do you mean?"

"You only saw him after the distance between you had been shrinking for hours," he reasoned quietly. "The farther apart you are, the worse it gets. Did you think that was all that's been happening to him the last five months? That what you saw was enough to drive me to expose us to you?"

He shook his head, too frustrated to look her in the eye.

"It was much worse."

She trembled, the words leaving her before she even knew what she was saying, "Then I can't leave."

He went rigid, teetering cautiously on the brink of hopefulness. "You would stay?"

"Can I?" she breathed, hugging herself tighter as she plummeted in the opposite direction. "A Princess of Hyrule, suddenly disappearing… wouldn't that cause more trouble for your people than anything?"

"Maybe it's time we stopped hiding in the shadows," he murmured, the red in his eyes catching the glow from the walls and the orb and her soup, and casting it back in blood. "Maybe it's time we took our place as servants of the Royal House again."

"What you're suggesting goes far beyond saving Link," she frowned. "You'll be changing life as you know it for all Sheikah, without their consent. I don't know if I can help you do that."

"Then maybe you need to see what I've seen." He raised his left hand, holding his palm toward her in a stiff gesture. "I'm a Seer, as well. I'm not gifted by any means. But I can show you, if you'll allow me."

She stared at his palm, and in her mind's eye it was staring back, blinking at her, waiting for permission. It made her breath shallow and her heart skip. It made memories of Link's laughter dance in the back of her head.

She stole a glance at the shadowy doorway and nodded, drifting closer, and he pressed the palm of his hand against her right eye, flooding her mind with his memories.


	10. Chapter 10

**Ten**

_They're overlooking the village, shrouded by the spray of the falls this high up. They aren't saying much. Because there isn't much to say._

_Then Link mutters, for the fourth time that night, "I'm going through the rite tomorrow."_

_"I know," they sigh. "Stop bringing it up. Things aren't going to be the same around here without you."_

_He smirks, unlatching one of his belts without ceremony and holding out the dagger and holster to them. "I want you to be Guardian."_

_At first they're dumbstruck. They want to refuse. They want to slap it out of his hand and tell him he's an idiot. But instead they clench the sheath tight in their fist, bobbing a nod, and manage, hoarsely, "I would be honored."_

_Time pulls out from around them, and he's bound and flinching in the dark as they carve an emblem into his face, and as magic floods him they can feel a residual, dark knot of it settle unobtrusively in them, and then he's gone, fleeing towards something none of them can feel without looking back._

_The next time they see him he's kneeling on the antechamber dais, a Seer's palm pressed into his right eye, trembling and panting as she peers into his mind for answers._

_"You'll need a strikeforce," the Seer says, once it's finally over, and summons the rest of the Elders to her as they rush to him from out of the shadows._

_"What are you doing back here, stupid?" they murmur, throwing his arm around their neck, and he has to gasp three times before he finally manages a response._

_"Needed help," he gets out, breathless, his neck taut with pain even as he forces a weak smile, and their stomach drops, because they can only imagine one reason for that._

_"Yiga?"_

_He nods long before he can answer. "Yiga."_

_Then the Elders turn collectively, frowning, and Link looks like he has to swallow a scream to meet their eyes. One of them sighs._

_"Are there any rules you haven't broken?"_

_"Just the one," he manages, voice shuddering out of his chest as his ribs seize._

_The Elders don't seem particularly surprised by that. And they definitely aren't impressed._

_"You must return," one of them says levelly, and before they can object, mouth popping open with the absurdity of what they're asking of him, Link nods._

_The shadows and the dais melt away, and the castle breathes around them in a whisper. Purah and Impa and a contingent of other Sheikah are with them, and they're waiting. Waiting for a princess. Waiting for nightfall. Waiting for their greatest enemies, lingering in the shadows just beyond the castle walls, to start a war._

_"How much did you tell her?"_

_He looks a little guilty when he admits, "Anything she asked."_

_Purah's cheeks puff out like she might be about to explode, but Impa is quick to cut the fuse._

_"Can we focus?" she breathes, though the look she gives Link says she's having a hard time doing that herself. "What's done is done."_

_"And when you go back?" they challenge quietly. Link grudgingly meets their eyes. "What will happen to you then?"_

_"I had to agree to it," he whispers. "I had to protect her."_

_They rub at their forehead, sighing. "You can't possibly know what that's going to do to you."_

_"I have a pretty good idea."_

_Impa gets up and walks away. It's a snap reflex. She has the right idea. It's getting harder for all of them to concentrate._

_Link says once she's gone, more quietly, wearing a sad smile, "Besides, I have a good plan B."_

_They look at him, unimpressed. "What?"_

_"You."_

_They frown. "That's not funny, Link."_

_"I'm not joking."_

_And then they really can't concentrate._

_The battle is fierce, and exhausting, and bloody. They take a sickle to the face, though others endure much worse, and Link is a force of nature, coiled over her like something feral, hewing more than one assassin apart when they stray too close. In the end they don't walk away unscathed. They wrap their fallen warriors to be carried home, and then carried beyond. And the Princess of Hyrule is safe._

_Link asks the three of them to stay. He entrusts her to them as he goes back to present the dead and accept judgment. And they can hardly say no to what might very well be tantamount to a final request._

_Time stretches and shrinks and snaps, and they're back home while their relief waits with the princess, and Link is screaming like he's burning alive._

_Impa is holding his hand while he arches off the bed, gasping and screaming and growling, and tears are streaming down her face, and when she turns her eyes on them they're more desperate than they've ever seen them._

_"Please, Robbie, I know it's hard," she quavers, "but you're his Guardian. You have to do this for him."_

_"I can't unless he asks," they grit out, nails biting so deep into their palms that it might bleed._

_"He hasn't asked?"_

_"No."_

_The knot of magic planted in their mind, tied to him, is still quiet, silently rebuking them when their thoughts wander to the dagger on their hip. It isn't a word, it isn't a 'no.' It's just a feeling. A feeling that it isn't the right time._

_She sighs, and it trembles. "Why does he hold on?"_

_"She's still alive," they say, and it's too simple and too awful. "He can still sense that she's out there."_

_Her mouth twists bitterly, and they know where her thoughts have gone. Where she lays the blame. "Then we have to respect his choice."_

_Link's teeth meet and grate, and his spine twists and his eyes screw shut, and he tries and fails to swallow another scream._

_"Where's Purah?"_

_"She couldn't take it."_

_They nod, swallowing. None of them could have known this was where it was going to end. That one of them—the strongest of them, the bravest of them—could possibly be reduced to this. Before they know why, before they even know they are, they're reaching with their left hand to cover his unmarked eye._

_"Robbie—"_

_"I have to know," they breathe, going rigid with anticipation. "I have to know."_

_And then they close their eyes and pry his mind open._

_The pain hits them later, like background noise. And it's much more like burning alive than they ever cared to imagine. But it was the loss that bludgeoned them first, like a mallet to the chest. It felt like losing an arm, or a child, or freedom. It ached and throbbed and consumed, an unending, incomprehensible torment too empty and too vast to face, pushing them towards an inviting precipice. But, like a distant thunder, a distant wind, they felt her heart, her breath, and it's a painful push in the other direction, drawing them irresistibly towards life._

_And time pulls and stretches again, and they're back in the castle, staring at a jewelled hairpin as they turn it between their fingers, the knot in their mind still silent as the grave and the void they had seen in Link's mind sprawling forever in their memory._

The vision ended with a sudden snap of light, so jarring Zelda flinched in the shadow and pressed her hands to her forehead, and Link had Robbie by his left wrist and by his throat, slamming him up against the nearest wall. His eyes were feral.

"She deserved to know," he choked out bitterly, and Link shoved him again.

"You were _terrifying _her!"

He took a deliberate step back, breathless, and raked a hand through his hair. Impa was at her side, a soothing hand on her shoulder as she came back to herself, and Zelda trembled. Even in breathlessness they were in sync.

"It's not his fault," she panted. "I gave him permission."

When he turned to meet her eyes, the bitterness in them stung. The words were more of an accusation than a question. "What did he show you?"

Words lodged and scrambled unpleasantly in her throat, and her eyes pulled away to the floor. Even if she had wanted to answer him, she didn't know how to describe any of it. He didn't move to comfort her, still quaking, fists still clenched. His knife on Robbie's belt glinted in the orb glow.

"I can't let you go back to that," she whispered, shaken, "even if you do have a Guardian."

He shot Robbie an icy glare. "Nice."

"I didn't mean to show her all that," he sighed, dragging a hand tiredly down his face. "You know I'm a lousy Seer."

"That's not all you are," he said acidly, turning to stalk out into shadow, and Robbie lurched after him.

"Link, wait—"

"I'll talk to him," Zelda breathed, getting to her feet, and stopped to touch his face. It was suddenly as familiar as her own. "I'll talk to him. I promise. And you were right," she whispered, mustering the courage to meet Impa's eyes. "This was my fault."

She went after him before either could reply, feeling her way down the barely visible front steps. Link hadn't gotten far; he was at the bottom, the heel of his hand pressed into his forehead and his bangs trapped in his fist. She touched his shoulder, but it was hardly necessary. He knew she was there, and why.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lost my temper. I just—" He turned, sighing, and met her eyes where she stood on the second to last step. His face was upturned, angles alight in the glow pouring out of the house. It looked like he was glowing in light from her. "This was difficult enough without knowing I was burdening you with it."

"Typical Shadow," she murmured, smiling, and touched the emblem on his eye as she descended the last two stairs. "Faced with a lifetime of torture, and you waste perfectly good energy worrying about me."

He turned his face into her palm to kiss it. "What would you rather I wasted my energy worrying about?"

"You need to forgive Robbie."

"I will. Later. After he's suffered a bit."

The waterfall over the village sighed, and she followed its spray up, up, with her eyes into a blue and green cloud of refracted bioluminescence. Into the places he had spent his last night among the Sheikah with his best friend, and asked him to take up a burden she still didn't understand.

"Will you take me into the cliffs?" she asked, very quietly, and he took her hand, eyeing her suspiciously as he pressed another kiss to it.

"All right."

She followed him blindly as he guided her over slopes and lifted her up ridges, leading her into secret, abandoned places above the village. The roar of the waterfall was deafening for a while, and then tapered off as they left the pool it plunged into further beneath them. It was cold where he finally brought them to rest, but he sat and then pulled her into his arms, and the warmth of him was enough.

"He was right, you know," she said, after they had sat in the silence and the spray for much too long, afraid of disturbing the stolen bit of peace with something unpleasant. "I needed to know."

"No," he murmured, pressing his forehead to her temple, sighing. "You needed to be left alone. You needed to forget about me and live your life."

"And leave you to rot down here."

She turned so he had to look her in the eye, and it pulled a smirk out of him.

"You and your sense of justice," he murmured.

She frowned at him, and he reclined against the stone and pulled her back into his arms. It was surprisingly difficult staying upset when he was holding her like this. But she was strong-willed.

"I can't let things go back to the way they were."

He stroked her hair, coaxing her head down to his chest. "We can talk about it after you've gotten some sleep."

"The Elders won't let you come back to Hyrule. It will cause too much trouble if I stay. Robbie thinks we should push for reunification."

"Could we not stage a revolution on my account, please?"

She sank deeper into him, sighing, and rigidly asked the question she was afraid of hearing answered. "What does a Shadow need a Guardian for?"

He hesitated. Listening to her pounding heart, no doubt. "He really is a lousy Seer."

She listened, too, pressing her ear to his chest. But she could only hear the one.

"I know it's hard for you to understand," he finally murmured, pressing his mouth to her hair. "But, for a Shadow, there are things much more frightening than death. The bonds that tie us to our hosts are strong. Some say they last forever, that they carry on to whatever lies beyond this life." He swallowed, his fingers flexing possessively where he held her. "And sometimes Shadows get left behind."

She closed her eyes, dreading hearing the rest. Knowing enough from her time in Robbie's mind to know where he was headed.

"If a Shadow ever outlives his host, the silence usually drives them to madness. Most want to end it before then. They say it's like having a hole blown through you that never stops hemorrhaging, or being cut in half." He loosed a shuddering breath beneath her. "I can't imagine."

"And when you're in that condition, committing suicide is difficult alone," she finished grimly, numb, and he pulled her closer without answering. But his silence was confirmation enough. She remembered Robbie, the horror that had swept through him when Link gave him his dagger, and the powerlessness he felt as he watched him writhe, and shivered. "And as long as I'm alive, you won't ask him to do it."

"It just never felt right," he whispered. "I could still feel you."

She sighed. "Everything would be so much easier if I could just release you from this. If you just weren't my Shadow anymore."

He went rigid, and then slowly sat up, taking her with him. He stared, incredulous, his probing crimson eyes harder than she had ever seen them.

"Who put that idea in your head?"

"No one," she breathed, eyes widening as she absorbed his indignation. His fear. "Is that possible?"

"No," he sighed, "it isn't."

He pulled her back into his arms, into his chest, and leaned again against the stone, holding her much too tight, and she dug her fingers into his clothes as they lapsed into a heavy, smothering silence.

She knew he was lying.


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: Sorry for the tremendous wait. Who's ready for misery! YAAAAAAY!_

**Eleven**

She dreamed they were back in Hyrule. She dreamed she was bright, that her skin was a sunbeam and her eyes were stars. She dreamed he was caught in her brilliance, suspended between her and the world, black as ink, a shadow ringed in spangled, glittering eclipse, and he was basking in her light.

It was almost painful returning to so much darkness after that.

His arms closed around her gently when he felt her stir, and she swallowed down bitter, disappointed tears built in her throat as she thought of home.

She whispered, "How long have I been gone?"

"Nearly two days."

The hunting parties would be out looking for her by now, flooding every corner of the kingdom with lantern light and torches. She wondered how well the Sheikah had hid their tracks when they left. She hadn't been paying attention. Had they closed and latched the balcony doors? Had she snapped bits of vine from ivy? Had her shoes left marks in the courtyard? Beyond the city walls? Straight into the heart of Kakariko? She doubted they would have been so careless. But if their city was really impregnable, they wouldn't have to resort to such secrecy. She couldn't stay and just hope her soldiers never stumbled upon it.

He kissed her temple at her silence, too lingering, too sweet, before he echoed her thoughts.

"We need to get you home."

She stared out at darkness, at a filmy cloud of mist speckled in cavern glow. She wanted to drill a hole in the ceiling and let in the light, or better, sink her kingdom into the earth and stay with him in perpetual night.

She whispered, the words escaping her lips before she could process them, "Come with me."

His lips curved into a smile beside her ear. "I'll always be with you," he promised again, guiding the back of her hand to brush above his heart. Above where he could feel hers beating beside it. "Just here."

_Not good enough_, she wanted to spit. But she swallowed it down like a stone lodged in her throat. He kissed the side of her neck, pressed his lips to her jaw, trying to reassure her. But it all felt empty.

She could only imagine one scenario where she could leave him, and he wouldn't help her enact it. She was going to have to get the answers she needed from someone else. And that meant lying to him to do it. Questions of loyalty and morality aside, that was going to be another issue entirely. Her heart would literally give her away.

And as for the rest… he had seen fit to lie to her when he thought it was best. She supposed this just made them even.

"Don't do this to yourself," he whispered, pained, misinterpreting her scheming and worry for dread. "Please. I've made my choices. And I don't regret any of them."

"How can you say that?" she demanded, turning in his arms. "Look at where we are. Look at what's about to happen to you. You could have been _safe_. If you hadn't—if _I_ hadn't drawn you out—"

"And never heard you say my name?" he returned, just as adamantly, and then, eyes flickering to her mouth, leaning closer to impart more comfort, or to take it, whispered, "Never touched you?"

"No," she snapped, shoving him away before he could pacify her and sweeping to her feet. She meant to say more, meant to argue, but suddenly she was gulping air and fighting tears, and all she could manage was a stubborn shake of her head. "No."

She turned, marching towards the cliff's edge even though she knew she could never get down on her own—knowing that _he_ knew, and that he would be there in an instant. She just about walked off the ledge into the void when his hand found her arm, and he guided her down from their hiding place in vibrating silence. His fingers brushed hers, once they were on solid ground—a question, or a request. Her mind was abuzz with bitter feelings and nerves, and she didn't know how to answer.

"You know what I did regret?" he murmured, threading his fingers slowly with hers, slipping and nudging, until she finally reciprocated. "That I didn't tell you how beautiful you were, or how full of passion, or kind, or ridiculously clever. That I didn't tell you how in love with you I was."

Her face crumpled. "You're breaking my heart. Can you hear that, too?"

But he just smirked at her, drawing her closer with a warm hand on her neck, and she fell into his embrace despite all her intentions to be difficult.

"I'm so sorry," she choked out against his shoulder.

It wasn't just an apology for her temper. She was apologizing for all of it. Apologizing for the way she hadn't left well enough alone; for the way she always pushed him too far; for the way her curiosity and selfishness had ruined his future.

Apologizing for what she was about to do.

He held her until she had no more tears left to cry, and then coaxed her face up to taste the last bit of salt on her lips.

"Maybe, when you're queen," he murmured, smiling softly as he led he back toward the village, "you can build a castle here. Just above us. Raise your children in it. And if they're anything like you, they'll stumble across these caverns when you let them out to play and never turn back."

"I was a very well-behaved child."

"I find that hard to believe."

She let herself imagine it. She imagined white spires framed by waterfalls and green slopes, hidden away in secret places instead of shining over Hyrule like a beacon. She imagined an elaborate bedchamber that she never used. She imagined little princes and princesses, with eyes that shone red in moonlight, whose governesses could never keep track of them because they seemed to be able to disappear in the smallest corner of shadow. It made her want to laugh and cry at once.

Back in the village, two figures cast in waterglow waited at the mouth of the path. Robbie, she surmised from the way he lurched to his feet at the sight of them. Purah was with him, probably dragged along for moral support. He was waiting in taut, miserable anticipation, and it sent schemes whirling in her mind.

She gave Link a sad smile. "You need to talk to him."

He nodded, but his eyes lingered too long. It made her wonder if he sensed her deception. It made her stomach knot. But she was a princess, and far too accustomed to wearing a mask. It startled her how easily her lips turned up, how easily her eyes shone kind and empathetic. How easily she lied.

She untangled her fingers from his and crossed the space to Robbie, offering him that same, false smile, and pulled him into an embrace with her arms around his neck. Then she leaned her mouth close to his ear and whispered, "_Stall him_."

He was a little wide-eyed when she pulled away. She squeezed his arms, and then glanced back at Link.

"We'll wait at the house," she hinted, taking Purah by the arm and ignoring her sputtered protests. She waited until she could hear them murmuring, until she could hear the sigh of a half-hearted argument, of an apology, of forgiveness. And then the second they were out of earshot, Zelda held her eyes meaningfully and whispered, "I need your help."

Purah pulled her along faster.

"What's your plan?" she asked as they crossed the threshold, snapping the door shut behind them. Zelda took a calming breath before she dared to tell her.

"There's a way to sever our connection," she pressed, "isn't there? A way to break the bond, so he won't be my Shadow anymore?"

Her eyes went wide as saucers. "He agreed to that?"

"No," she admitted, sighing. "He told me it was impossible."

Purah frowned. "I see. Well, it's not. But we didn't suggest it for a reason. We knew he wouldn't want it."

"But it would spare him," she challenged, searching for her eyes, and they both frowned harder when she found them. "It would _spare him_, wouldn't it?"

It took Purah a long time to answer, and when she did, the turmoil was making her eyes water.

"Yes. Yes, of course it would spare him."

She sighed, shutting her eyes as though she could unsee the betrayal she was abiding. "Then you have to tell me how."

"Do you even know what you're saying? What you're asking?" She checked. Her voice had gotten away from her and her teeth were set. Her fists clenched and unclenched again, as though she were grabbing at frustrated arguments and they were wriggling free. "He won't be your Shadow anymore. He won't be _himself_ anymore."

"I know that."

"He'll be devastated. You don't know what it means to him."

"And if I don't? If I leave things as they are and I go back to Hyrule, what happens to him then?"

Her lips pressed into a line and her eyes strayed, and she didn't answer. Zelda didn't fault her for it. It was a testament to her loyalty. A testament to the differences between them. She knew what she was asking her to do, and it made her throb all over. Because Link didn't want it. But people didn't always want what was good for them.

She hugged her arms, loosing a shuddering sigh. "I just… don't know what else to do."

Even though Purah hadn't moved, it was suddenly hard for Zelda to make her out. It was like she was melting away. Melting into the shadows, where she wouldn't have to stomach being exposed.

"The ritual can only be perform by three people proficient in High Magic," she said. "The Elders."

She swallowed misgivings, trembling at the way they slithered down. "Then I need to find some way to speak with them—privately, without arousing suspicion. And pray that they won't fight me."

"They can't refuse you," she whispered, like it was a confession. "You have the right."

"Then that just leaves Link. If he catches wind of this—"

"He'll do something stupid, like abscond with you back to Hyrule and let the others hunt him down rather than let himself be Unbound. I know."

She honestly hadn't even thought of that. It made her stomach clench.

"I don't understand," she breathed, staring into shadows, into oblivion, where Purah's eyes should have been. Letting the nothingness turn her numb. "How could you all let him suffer when you had this option?"

"Because," she said, her eyes, red as blood moons, rising up to meet hers in the dark, "we don't believe in stripping someone of who they are."

Her brow furrowed. "Even if it means—"

"Wait."

She did, nearly holding her breath. A moment later the door unlatched, Link and Robbie slipping unobtrusively inside. Purah's eyes held hers in warning.

"Get out of the shadows, Purah," Link scoffed quietly. "You look like a ghost."

"I'll find Impa, then," she murmured, setting her eyes to the floor and heading for the door. "She'll want to be there when you go."

Feeling light and shadow drain around her in equal measure, Zelda realized she didn't know which of them she meant.

But then the door closed again, and Link's fingers brushed penitently at her waist, and Robbie busied himself with looking preoccupied with something in the corner—wanting to afford them the illusion of privacy, but not quite able to pry himself away.

"I still can't believe you came all this way," he murmured, smiling. Because of course he would smile at her, now of all times. He dipped his forehead against hers, nudging her gently, meeting her eyes. Hesitantly daring to hope. His voice was just above a whisper. "Maybe… someday you'll find this place again. Maybe I'll dream you to life."

She didn't answer. She was too afraid of giving herself away with a clumsy, half-hearted reply. Her fingers dug into his arms. Maybe he wouldn't even want her find Kakariko again, after this was over. Maybe he would forget her. Or maybe he would never forget, and that prospect scared her even worse.

Robbie met her eyes through the glow, curious. Wondering what she was scheming, and wise enough not to ask. Link weaved his fingers with hers, smile fading as she stonewalled all his efforts to comfort her, and tugged her gently towards the door.

"Let's get you home," he whispered.

He led her through the pitch black streets, up into the narrow corridors that snaked through the stone that was the ingress between their worlds. Her blood pounded hotter and thicker until she thought she might choke on it, until she thought she might be sick, until she thought she wouldn't have the fortitude to go through with it. But then she would meet Robbie's eyes in the dark, probing for answers she couldn't give, and she would remember the vision. She would remember the alternative. And it burned hotter than her guilt.

It was dark as they stepped through the atrium and onto the stone table. But she was getting rather good at being blind, and when she felt Link draw up short beside her, she instinctively took a step back and closer. The blue glow bloomed out of the orbs, revealing what he had seen: a handful of Elders standing in their path, the old woman she had met before at the forefront, and Purah and Impa with them.

"We would speak with her," the woman said—the foremost Elder, it seemed. "Alone."

"I'm still her Shadow," Link argued cautiously. "What could you possibly have to discuss with her that I shouldn't hear?"

The Elder extended her hand, expectant, and Link defiantly closed his grip. But Zelda touched his arm.

"I'll go with her," she whispered. "It will be fine."

His brow furrowed as she let him go, as she stepped out from his protection, eyes clouding with doubt. Robbie drew up beside him, crossing his arms, looking similarly perplexed. She crossed the table and breathed, too afraid to look back. Too afraid to meet his eyes and find distrust welling in them.

Impa and Purah stayed behind as the Elders led her through an alcove into a separate smaller chamber. They turned to face her as she entered in a smothering semicircle. Their stark hair and crimson eyes were harsh in the glow, cutting and bitter, as though they all remembered a forgotten history of Hyrule that she did not. It made her stomach twist, even as she raised her neck higher to address them.

"My granddaughter says you wish to speak with us," the Elder said, flatly.

Zelda swallowed, ignoring her irreverence. "Yes. I know that you have the power to sever the bond between Shadow and host. I ask that you do that for us now."

"So it's true," another murmured, disturbed, but the old woman held up her hand for silence. Her eyes were wider; it wasn't an expression of disgust, or anger. Just shock.

"Has he displeased you in some way?" she pressed. "Harmed you?"

She gave her head a firm shake. "No. He's been nothing but loyal."

"Then why would you deal with him so cruelly?"

The question stung like a nettle. She wanted to crumble—wanted to throw herself at the old woman's feet and give way to tears, beg her for another option, beg her to let him go. She fisted her hands at her side instead.

"He'll suffer if I don't."

"He'll suffer if you do."

"I have the right," she insisted, working so her voice wouldn't quaver. Working so she wouldn't burst into frustrated tears. "You can't deny me this. I will have him at my side, or not at all."

"But do you know what you're asking?" she challenged. "Would you know yourself if you were no longer a princess? A woman? A daughter? Would you fear someone who could take those things away from you?"

She swallowed the quadrant of her heart that was lodged in her throat, and terror, and guilt. It went down like bile. She wanted to gag on it.

"He'll adapt," she whispered. "We both will."

"You will not be swayed from this?"

"No."

They frowned amongst themselves, and Zelda didn't breathe, because she was sure if she did that it would stick with a terrible sound in her mouth and she wouldn't be able to hold back the grief that was beating at the gates.

"An Unbinding is complicated," the Elder sighed. "Binding a Shadow to a host is like tearing down a dam and letting the water rush out. It is the natural progression of things. But to undo it is to build a dam through a river that won't stop flowing."

"I see," she breathed, though she really didn't. But the thought of it made her tremble. "What must I do?"

"The burden falls to us. You need only look him in the eye and tell him in your own voice that you wish it."

Of course that was the price: facing him, and admitting her betrayal.

The Elder gestured, palm up, towards the door. An invitation and a challenge at once.

_Face him, if you have the courage. If you can stomach the look in his eyes._

She wanted to run out of the room and into his arms. She wanted to gasp into his ear that she would run away with him, that they could keep running and disappear into shadow forever. She would give up her kingdom and he would give up his people, and they would start over on distant shores. She wanted to smile and tell him that had been her plan all along. She wanted to lie.

But she didn't have that luxury anymore.

She turned and followed the gesture out of the alcove, across the stone table in the watery glow of the orbs, moving with leaden feet towards where Link and the others were waiting. Purah was collapsed on herself where she stood, like someone had strapped the great one-eyed door onto her back, and Impa, standing beside her, offered no comfort. Her somber expression said she knew what they were planning. Her fists were clenched so tight where they were folded over her arms that her knuckles were turning white. Robbie's brow was lined with worry. And Link was so stone still and expressionless she couldn't read him at all, and that scared her worse than anything.

When she finally drew up to face him, it took everything she could muster to meet his eyes.

"What's going on, Zelda?" he asked, too quietly, as two of the Elders stationed themselves to flank him.

She took a breath, readying herself to plunge in the knife. Readying herself to confirm everything she knew he must have already begun to suspect. Readying herself to destroy the last bit of good faith he had in her. But there was really no preparing herself for something like that, was there?

"I don't want you to be my Shadow anymore," she said, breathless, her voice possessed of neither power nor conviction, watching his eyes change, watching him veer towards belief in something he had promised himself couldn't be so. "I told them to unbind us."

His voice was just a whisper, laced in shadow and belonging to shadow, driving back every ounce of light she had left.

"You did _what_?"

She took a breath—to take it all back, to apologize, to explain—but she couldn't form the words, her vision swimming and hazy as the betrayal scrawled all over his face knocked the air from her lungs. The Elders each placed a hand on his shoulders, leading him backward. He let himself be pulled away. He looked numb, hardly reacting as they eased him to his knees.

"You knew," Robbie breathed, suddenly trembling, meeting Purah's eyes as they brimmed and spilled over. "You knew, and you helped her?"

She couldn't answer, lips mashed so hard together it seemed she meant never to speak again.

The Elders' grip on his shoulders changed, fingers curling so only the middle and forefinger were extended and pressed to the arteries on either side of his throat, and then mirrored the hold on the pulse at his wrists, shackling him with the beginnings of the ritual. And that was when it became real. That was when the disbelief in his eyes turned to fear, when the dazed compliance turned to struggle. He pulled—not enough to break free, but enough that they lurched to hold him.

"Don't let them do this," he insisted, his voice full of all the power and conviction hers had lacked and near to breaking with it. "I know you think that this is your fault—that it's better this way—"

"It _is_," she choked out, bitter tears finally starting to spill. "This is all I can give you. A way to live your life. I can't let things go back to the way they were, can't you understand that? Would you really rather I just leave you here, condemn you to lifetime of torture when we both know—"

"_Yes_, Zelda," he hissed, straining again, as his own eyes started to brim. "Gods, _yes_, that's what I want. I know you don't understand. I know it scares you. But this is all I have left. _Please_. Don't let them take away what I am."

The atrium around them was a vacuum, silent in a way that only a room full of Sheikah possibly could be, making every shaking breath she took that much more deafening. He stared up at her in too much light as the foremost Elder came up behind him, pressing her fingertips and the pads of her thumbs to the sides of his face and his forehead. He flinched, breath spiking, and held her eyes. Imploring her to reconsider.

And then everything stopped, because they were all waiting for her. For her permission, or her judgment, or her absolution.

She sucked a breath to answer and couldn't, her hands pressing beneath her ribs to hold in the cry trying to break loose there and tears spilling down her cheeks. She wanted to respect his wishes. She wanted to give him every stupid thing he asked for. She wanted to be brave enough to let him make his own choices, even if they hurt him.

But she couldn't. She _couldn't_.

She met the Elder's eyes and nodded.

"Do it."

Link made a _sound_, something desperate and anguished as his whole body sprung taut, as he made to pull, or run, or tear his own throat out rather than let them go through with it. But he wouldn't come loose, either bound by some magic she didn't understand or weak with despair.

"You can stop this, Zelda, _please_," he begged, voice vaulting, struggling for all he was worth against intangible chains as the tears he had barely restrained finally tumbled in awful streaks down his face. "Gods, please, no. I don't know how to live without you. I'm _scared_. I'm scared of not feeling you anymore—of not knowing—"

He stopped, gripped with panic and gulping air that couldn't come fast enough, and screwed his eyes shut. Glowing veins fractured from his wrists and neck and the places where the Elder's fingertips touched his face. The tiniest bit of light in a realm of shadow magic. A testament to how unnatural it was. Beside her Robbie trapped a cry in his throat, unsheathing the dagger, answering a call no one could hear but him and shaking so hard the blade trembled in his hands.

He pressed his fist against his mouth, holding back a scream or worse. He whispered, "Oh, Gods."

And then the veins grew, spreading hungrily up Link's arms, through his throat, up to his eyes. They opened as the glow touched them, too, ringing his irises in light. And then the magic snapped out, so suddenly she saw spots when the room receded back into the orb glow.

The Elders let him go. He fell forward onto his hands, panting. His eyes were cast to the floor.

And just like that it was over. So quick...

She went to her knees in front of him, shaking all over, rattling with tiny sounds that resonated so much louder in the shadows.

"I'm sorry," she wept. "I'm so sorry—"

She reached for him, to hold him, to touch him, but his voice brought her up short.

He whispered, "Just go."

Purah was sobbing. Zelda's hands hovered in the space between them, empty. She stared for a moment longer at the spill of silver hair shielding his eyes, at the shape of him, doubled over in shadow so deep he was starting to blend. And then she had an inkling of what he must have felt the night he saved her from the Yiga. She felt naked in front of him. Exposed as a liar and a traitor, burning in a glare of darkness. And she wanted to run.

She got to her feet, scurrying back from him like he was a hungry flame. Robbie's hands were fists, and he was staring at the floor where the dagger had dropped from his grip, shaking. The glow was fading—or her vision was?—and it was Impa's hand on her wrist that brought her back to her senses.

She led her silently away, helping her flee, taking her through the great stone doorway, through darkness and darkness that never seemed to end, leaving Kakariko and its shadows behind. They went for hours without stopping to rest, finally stepping out of the deep seated chill of the caverns towards higher ground, toward the humidity and the warmth of a more familiar realm. The journey was so much easier when she was used to being blind.

It was so much easier when there was something to run from, when there was guilt nipping at her heels.

Eventually they emerged from the stone, climbed out from behind a spray of waterfalls cascading down the cliffs into the pools below. They moved through the forest until they saw torches bobbing in the distance. Weaving through the trees like a flock of fairy spirits. Impa ducked away from their glow, but her touch lingered on Zelda's wrist, waiting until the search party was near enough to ensure they would find her. And then she bled away into darkness.

The blooms of torchlight dappled and swam in her vision, swaying, chasing, descending on her and pulling her out of shadow. Pulling her into the light. Banishing the dark.

She whispered, for no one to hear, "I didn't get to say goodbye."


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: *does the home stretch dance* (there is too such a dance! I just don't get to do it very often!)_

**Twelve**

Link spent the better part of three years trying to acclimate to his new circumstances. Trying to get on with his life.

But reintegrating when he'd been completely stripped of self and purpose was an unforgiving endeavor.

He wasn't a Seer. He was useless at High Magic. He had all the skills to be a Warrior, but the restrictions on traveling into Hyrule remained, and their enemies never made it as far as Kakariko. It didn't feel like he belonged anywhere. But his lack of a place in society wasn't really the problem.

It was the listlessness.

There was a void inside him that he couldn't figure out how to fill, an emptiness where the second heartbeat used to be, a deafening quiet in his mind where there used to be breath. He would sit and listen to the silence for hours. Others insisted that he would adjust to it, that his life could still be productive. They tried to help. And it wasn't that they were wrong, exactly. It just all felt pointless.

Nothing seemed to matter.

And time soldiered on in spite of him. That summer Robbie met a willowy girl named Cherry, and a few months later he married her. Link stood beside him at their wedding. It was kind of Robbie to ask, considering he hadn't been much of a friend to him since the Unbinding. By then he was able to look Purah in the eye—that had taken a while, too. He found it in himself to be happy for her when she was promoted, and didn't ask her about what she had seen in the world above whenever her taskforce sank back into the shadows. And just recently the Matriarch had passed on and Impa had taken up her grandmother's mantle.

That had been the most jarring change of all. Impa wasn't like the others. She was quieter, more introspective. She wasn't a Seer, but she seemed to see things no one else did. And she seemed aware of his timetable in a way they weren't. She would sit and listen to the silence with him. It was nice.

It was like starting over when she left to begin her duties.

"I should have listened to you," he murmured to the darkness, to the silence, sitting alone in it one night. "I should have run."

He couldn't understand why she of all people had suggested something so drastic back then. Now he couldn't understand why he hadn't listened.

Not that it mattered.

Nothing seemed to matter.

Impa met him near twilight a few weeks later, when the shadows were just losing their rosy edges and falling towards midnight colors. She set a furoshiki beside him and started unfolding without a greeting. In case he was listening. She was thoughtful like that. He took the chopsticks when she offered them, and she decided it was safe to speak.

"Have you been up here all day?"

"More or less," he breathed, opening his bento. A smile tugged at his mouth. "You brought me umeboshi."

"Purah brought me the plums a few weeks ago."

"I didn't know she was home."

Impa nodded over a mouthful. "She came for the ceremony."

"The ceremony," he echoed, the rusted gears in his head ticking and snapping unpleasantly as it all came back to him at once. He stared at her. "That was today."

"You didn't miss much."

He dragged a hand over his face. "Gods. I'm so sorry."

"It's fine."

"I can't believe I missed it."

She smiled. "I saved you umeboshi."

"You did," he agreed, taking one reverently and letting the sugar and brine dissolve all over his tongue. "Thank you. That was… I didn't deserve it."

"Stop apologizing or I'm taking it back," she ordered, and he dutifully shoveled rice in his mouth. "Now ask me how awkward it is to be Matriarch over a council twice my age."

"You have a gift," he deflected easily. "No one challenged you. Isn't that endorsement enough?"

"Maybe they just didn't want the responsibility. I know I don't."

He snorted. "You been training for this your whole life."

"And it's still nothing like I thought it would be," she murmured, and the sudden weight in her tenor soundly deflated the levity. She took another bite and sighed. And then another, too quickly afterwards. He got the feeling she was trying to shove words down her throat.

He took another umeboshi before he called her on it. He wanted to enjoy at least one more bite in peace.

"What is it?"

She watched him sidelong, calculating, deciding. It was a fearsome thing to behold.

"If you could go back to Hyrule, would you want to see her again?"

The question was like a painful light bursting behind his eyes. He waited until his vision dimmed, until his heart wasn't pounding nauseatingly in his throat. It felt like he couldn't swallow.

He finally admitted, "I don't know."

She pushed rice around in her bento. The unspoken was shifting the shadows from midnight to black, draining the color until the darkness around them was opaque and drab instead of something to be admired. But he didn't dare ask what prompted that question. He couldn't.

She didn't speak for a moment either, weighing his answer. Distilling it. Listening for something unsaid, lingering in the silence.

"As Matriarch, I could countermand my predecessor. Unwrite her law. But I didn't want to bring it up before." She put her chopsticks away, threaded her hands. It was strange, seeing her fidget. "I still don't want to bring it up."

Link was still holding his meal like he meant to eat more. He didn't. He forced umeboshi into his mouth anyway.

Impa sighed. "I suppose a better question is, Have you forgiven her?"

His voice was gravel. "Why is that a better question?"

"Have you?"

"I don't—" He tried to breathe, tried to blink away the specter of green eyes that had haunted his dreams every night as though they were still bound. "I don't know."

"It's a strange thing," she mused quietly, "to have the power to give you something you wanted so much, and still not know if it's the right thing to do."

"Things have changed," he shrugged. He tried to talk himself into eating more, and then set the bento aside when he couldn't stomach the thought. "I… don't know that I would recognize her anymore."

"And if you did? Would you forgive her then?"

"Does it matter?" he scoffed bitterly. "I'm Unbound. It's not as though that can be undone."

Impa went still as a stone. Her eyes were glued to the floor, and rigid, and just a sliver too wide. It sucked all the air out from around them. He moved, his body vibrating like a livewire, angling himself closer to look for her eyes.

"It _can't _be undone," he said, working with every fiber of his being to not make it a question. Her eyes finally dragged up to his, all hesitance and fear and misery, and he couldn't breathe. "Oh, Gods."

He went to his feet, turned, paced to nowhere, aching to run or to hide, and dug his fingers into his scalp. He tremored like he was splitting in two. His vision was pulsing white and sickening and his stomach felt inside out. He couldn't breathe.

"Gods. _Hylia_. This can't—this can't be."

"I couldn't tell you until now," she said. "I couldn't stomach the thought of giving you hope and then tearing it away from you if I was challenged."

He didn't turn, still gasping and shuddering as the possibility rent him open. She moved, took his jaw in her hands. He held on to her wrists like they were the only thing keeping him from being devoured by something faceless.

"This can't be real."

"That's up to you."

"She doesn't want me anymore."

"You know that's not why she did it."

He bent his head, swallowing a sob, or a shout. He was being ripped apart and stitched back together at once. It was torture and non-existence he didn't know how to endure. It was everything he had been grieving for three years, clawing itself out of the grave he had made for it, half-alive and terrifying. Tears spilled from his eyes and ran over her hands, and she tilted her forehead to touch his.

"I can bind you again. Restore what was taken from you. But only if that's what you want."

His fingers flinched around her wrists. He hadn't had a choice the first time. Now that he did, he almost wished he didn't. _Gods_, he couldn't breathe.

"Link. Look at me."

He dragged his face up. It was tear-stained and petrified. He found her eyes, tried to swallow, tried to breathe, tried not to scream. She thumbed at his scar, and he trembled.

"Do you want to be her Shadow again?"

The words fell out of him like they might be his last.

"Yes. Please, yes."

Her eyes pinched shut like the words had hurt. But she didn't fight him on it, or hesitate. She guided them both to kneel, and his heart was galloping so fast it ached. She took his wrists, held them together at the pulse points. The way they had touched when they were tied together, the first time he was bound. The softest, gentlest tendril of magic seeped from her hands and slipped up his arms.

It was like unstopping a wellspring.

The cavern and the shadows shrunk, tumbled away as something in him grew and swallowed him whole, heavy and insistent and dragging him towards someplace else. Towards a castle, towards a window, towards a room, towards a princess. Towards a heartbeat. Towards the sound of a breath.

He gasped, eyes blown and unseeing as he was filled from the inside out, as the void flooded and expanded again to accommodate a devotion and a fire no mortal could possibly contain.

It was so quick he couldn't gulp air fast enough. Impa shifted, the shadow of her ghosting over eyes that were watching someone else, and pressed a warm, lingering kiss to his cheek. He could feel tears on his face that weren't his.

She whispered, as the urge to run surged up in him like a flood, "Be safe."


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: Epilogue to follow very soon. Thanks for reading and for all your lovely reviews!_

**Thirteen**

Link lurked in the thick shadows cast by the castle spires, listening. Her heartbeat pulsed warm and steady, like a pendulum. The sun was marking its slow descent, painting everything molten and rich. It made him ache, waiting outside the walls for the cover of darkness.

But, oh, to feel that ache again.

He clung to the stones, breathing deep and reveling in the sore stretch of his ribs. The sensation felt like torture before, an unpleasant reminder that they were apart. Now it was a scathing reassurance that he was bound to her. He could have spent forever on the fringes of her presence, fixated on the way it burned. But he knew Peace was waiting for him, and the draw was irresistible.

The light slipped beyond the horizon and he made his ascent, scaling the tower to her bedroom window and stealing inside. She hadn't come up yet, her heart and her breath whispering to him from some lower floor. Very little had changed; he still knew these shadows like the back of his hand. He slipped into a corner of darkness where the firelight never reached and settled down to wait. It was surreal, being in that room again, hearing her sigh in his head, almost feeling the drum of her fingertips vibrating in his own as she suffered a particularly dull meal. He had forgotten how good he had been at reading her moods, even at a distance.

It wasn't long before she moved. He could feel her drifting down hallways, climbing stairs, steadily closing the distance separating them. He listened to her heartbeats, counted them, groaned within himself when his own pulse shifted to match. It was like she was devouring him. And he wanted her to.

The doorknob turned and he braced himself for the inevitable hammer to the chest, for the crushing weight of that much peace crashing over him at once.

It didn't help.

For all her elegance and leisurely pace, she still blew into the room like a squall. His heart throbbed near to bursting as she moved, pulling pins from hair the color of sunlight until it tumbled down past her shoulders, reaching with willowy arms to unfasten the buttons at her back, ignoring the room around her as her eyes stared through it to someplace else, some tangle of thoughts even his touch on her pulse wouldn't let him guess at.

He took a moment while she changed out of her gown to adjust, to gulp air until the rush of lightheadedness gradually faded. He was vibrating with the nearness of her. And it still wasn't enough. She emerged again in a long silk robe, fixed herself a cup of tea from the tray on her table, and curled up in her armchair with a book.

He almost showed himself then. Almost slipped out of the shadows to tip her book down, meet those glittering green eyes over the pages, and watch them dance with surprise. But fear kept him in place. Fear that she wouldn't want him here. Fear that she wouldn't remember him.

Fear that she was waiting for someone else. A lot could happen in three years.

So he sank deeper into the dark and waited. She read and sipped from her teacup in tranquil obliviousness. He trembled with peace and dread. But no one else joined her, and the candles were starting to burn down, and not long after the book in her hands thumped closed.

He thought of waiting until the next day, or the next week, or of not revealing himself at all. Of being the Shadow he should have been back then, hounding her steps in perfect silence and perfect anonymity. But he burned to make himself known. To be seen by those eyes that hadn't given him a moment's peace since last they bored through him. She rose from her armchair, and he rose out of the shadow to meet her.

She turned away from the fire, eyes dragging up to his, and the teacup tumbled from her hands and shattered.

"Link."

Her pulse was flying. He wanted to bury himself in the thrill of it. And to hear that name again in that voice… he let a rueful smile tug at his mouth.

"Hello, Zelda."

She was frozen on the spot. He took a slow step forward, approaching her as gently as he might approach an injured animal. She looked startled as one. She scarcely breathed. His arms turned open, reached out until they cradled hers without touching them. Ready to support her if she fell, or hold her if she would let him.

He whispered, "You're trembling."

She let her arms sink into his touch, holding him where her hands met his forearms, and she had to have felt the shiver that ran all through him. She puffed a breathy laugh, but it was a mirthless sound. Her hands dug deeper, like he might just up and disappear if she let him go.

"I can't believe it's really you," she said—finally, quietly, as though they might be overheard. "Do the others know you're here? Did they allow it? Did you…?"

"They know," he assured her, and then licked dry lips to tell her the rest, to tell her that he was bound to her again. But the words lodged in his throat. Because things might be different. She might not want a Shadow. She might not want him.

"Good," she sighed, shoulders falling in relief. "That's good."

Silence descended over them like a fog, thick and awkward, but she still hadn't let go of his arms. He was happy for that, at least. Happy that her instincts told her to hold on, instead of push him away.

"Where is my mind at," she breathed, dropping him too quickly and offering him a smile that was decidedly plastic. "Come, sit down. Tell me everything."

She turned, heart spluttering and breath catching, and made to snuff out the candelabra wicks on her table; he caught her wrist gently before she could get to them all.

He said, "You know I don't mind."

She nodded, her lips pulling towards a frown as she worked smudges off her fingers and moved towards the fireplace. He followed, listening to the hammer of her heart in his chest as they crouched in front of the flames. Her pulse just wouldn't settle. It was like her heart was going to burst out of her chest. It reverberated in his like a swarm of keese trapped in his ribs.

"Robbie's married," he started huskily, managing to force his lip to quirk, and she mirrored him. The smile touched her eyes.

"Not to Purah, surely?"

"No," he smirked. "Her name is Cherry. Purah was promoted a class. She heads her own taskforce."

"I'm sure she deserved it."

"Her grandmother passed away," he added quietly, carefully. "Impa is Matriarch now."

He waited with bated breath, studying her, watching her for signs that she recognized the significance. Something flickered through her eyes—an errant thought, or the glimmer of an idea—but it faded before he could name it. She swallowed.

"And you?"

His hands fisted on his knees. Gods, but he was a coward. He wanted to hang his head, wanted to hide. But he forced himself to look her in the eyes, braced himself to gauge her reaction when she finally heard the truth.

"I asked Impa to Bind me to you again," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I didn't even know that was a possibility until she told me. Until she asked. I thought…"

The gentle smile on her face melted as he spoke, her brow drawing together prettily in a way that made his stomach drop.

"You mean you're my—"

Her teeth clenched over the rest, and his mind went silent as she held her breath.

"Shadow," he admitted, trembling.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, covering a sound. Her eyes were wide and brimming. The moment was suspended, like the painful stutter of a heartbeat, And suddenly they were both talking at once.

"I didn't—after everything I did, I thought you would never—"

"Zelda, I'm so sorry. I know I didn't have the right—"

They both came up short, staring at each other. Stray tears were streaming down her cheeks, but her expression had smoothed with confusion.

She demanded, breathless, "What?"

"I thought—" His brow pinched. "You said you didn't want me to be your Shadow anymore!"

"Because I was trying to save you!"

"And you thought I would never what?" he demanded. "Want you?"

"How could you possibly? After I betrayed you? After I took away a part of who you are when everyone I asked begged me not to do it?" She buried the heel of her hand into forehead, trying to hold back tears, and then gestured wildly with it. "Why aren't you with Impa?"

"Why would I be with _Impa_?"

"Because she's in love with you!"

"And you think I would be so easily swayed?"

"What are you saying? I thought she would make you happy!"

"How could she when I'm still in love with you?"

She held her breath again, the taut silence shrinking and stretching into another stuttering heartbeat. The wide, brimming eyes were back, her expression warping startled, or mystified, or horrified. It was dark and awful. It reminded him of the void that he had spent so long trying to fill.

"I don't expect anything," he promised quietly, swallowing doubt. "Three years is a long time. And I know it was selfish of me to do this, that should have stayed in the shadows where I belonged, but… I wanted to see you. And if you don't want me to show myself again, I won't. And if—if you don't want me to be your Shadow—" Gods, the words were literally _sticking _in his throat, and he couldn't swallow them down. He was shaking. He couldn't breathe, couldn't stomach the thought of going through that again, of being ripped apart and emptied and stitched back together into some shell of who he used to be— "I can go back—I can tell Impa to undo it—"

Her hands were on his jaw before he could dredge up any more of that awful, awful idea, her lips sealed suddenly against his, confining him to perfect silence. He couldn't move. Her kiss was purging shadow and darkness and flooding him with her light. It was a different sort of unbinding all together. The sort that he wanted to spend his life chasing.

She pulled back slowly, stiffly, hardly daring to breathe; then she met his eyes. "I'd like you to stay," she whispered. "If that's… if that's really what you want."

He nodded, daring to reach for her, daring to tangle his fingers in the silk at her hip and coax her closer. He tipped his forehead against hers and breathed, basking in that hint of nightshade blossom and sunlight and the warmth of her hands still lingering on his neck.

"If that's what I want," he echoed, his lips tugging towards a rueful smile. They brushed along her cheekbone and he tasted salt. "You're ridiculous."

"I thought you would never forgive me. Not for as long as you lived."

Funny how not many hours earlier he wasn't sure himself. And now she was in his arms, and the thought of letting her go for anything, least of all fear or something as petty as a grudge, made his stomach twist. He pulled her closer, buried into the side of her neck and pressed kisses beneath her ear, and she hooked her arms around him to clutch at his shoulders, sinking deep into him as she could.

If he had to choose between fearing her and loving her, he would always choose this.

"I'll always be with you," he promised, not for the first time. Not for the last.

She pulled back to smile breathlessly at him, blinding him again with her irresistible light—swallowing him whole, eclipsing him, surrounding him in radiance until he was cast in full antumbra.

"And I will always love you," she whispered, like it was a secret thing, like it belonged to shadows. "With all my heart."


	14. Epilogue

_A/N: Thank you so much for reading you guys, this was a lot of fun! A special thank you to everyone who took the time to write me a review (or several!), you guys are the absolute best. I hope you enjoy this little ending to their story. I... may have gotten a little watery-eyed at the end there. Follow me at embyrinitalics on Tumblr for the latest on my new projects. Thanks again! xoxo_

**Epilogue**

Link sat with his best friend in the shadow of the tower, watching the harvest ball drag into the night with all its blooms of torchlight and fire. It was nice to have a place to talk, just the two of them. It had been a while. Not that moving between the realms was a difficult thing, not really. But there were other things that got in the way, responsibilities and distractions and things pulling them in opposite directions.

Link tore his eyes away from Zelda, a vision in jewels and silk and starlight, to smile at him.

"How's Cherry?"

"Pregnant," Robbie frowned. "Grumpy."

"I'll be disappointed if the only reason you came to visit was to escape your wife."

"No," he smirked wryly. "Not entirely. Although they say it might be twins, so."

He raised his eyebrows in a decent attempt to not look mortified for him. "Congratulations."

Robbie laughed softly, appreciatively. Ballgowns and coattails and croquembouche towers swirled beneath them in amber shadows. He took a breath and held it. Then,

"I had my first Foresight."

Link clamped his jaw to keep it from going slack. Few Seers had that gift, and Robbie's abilities had always been mediocre at best. It had never occurred to him that laziness and not his own limitations might have been to blame.

"I hope you won't take this the wrong way," he finally said, "but I'm shocked."

"So was I." Robbie smiled, something secret glinting in his eye. "It was of you."

A stiff breeze carried over the plains and the gala below, raking warmth and laughter up into the spires. The fires danced with the courtiers.

"Me?"

He held up his palm, smiling. His eyes looked glassy, but it must have been reflection from the torchlight below. "Can I show you?"

Link nodded, turning so his unscarred eye faced the palm that stared back. They met, and the world went milky and bright.

_Hyrule aged, days and nights rippling by like a fan of turning pages. It was history, unraveling from time's spool and weaving through the weft threads. It was a lifetime in the blink of an eye. It was the first breath and the last. It was a glimpse at the unfinished tapestry emerging on the loom._

_Hyrule had a queen. She wore a ring, though her country knew no king. They called her the Shadow Queen. But that was a name born of superstition and fantasy, surely._

_Her children were outrageously clever, and their eyes changed color in moonlight. Their hair was platinum blonde, but some insisted it was more like silver. But wasn't that silly?_

_They say the queen lived for the night, that she always kept the curtains drawn and the lamps low, and that the only time she loved the sun was when she stole away with her children to hidden palaces that not even the mapmakers knew the location of for certain. They say she was caught more than once out on the terraces, during the midnight celebrations, tangled in the arms of a lover, but no one could say which courtier it was for sure._

_Behind closed doors, the staff knew something closer to the truth: that the Queen had a husband who was something of a mystery, but who loved his wife more than he loved life itself. Not that they had ever seen him, of course. But they would always leave out two sets of clothes, and set the table at the head and the foot with settings for the children in between, and sometimes they would find the notes he had left for them with instructions or a thank you in peculiar places (he was always very polite)._

_The young hires would always cower and say the castle must be haunted, but the older staff would scoff. That was ridiculous. The Queen just had a shadow for a husband. And if they dared ask her, she would tell them as much herself._

_Zelda's reign was long and prosperous and beautiful. Her country was peaceful and blessed, and her rule was just, and they said the world wouldn't see its equal again for a thousand years. And with a queen as wonderful as that, the people could hardly begrudge her an extremely private homelife._

_When it was her time, she passed on to the Spirit Realm, and they say her Shadow said goodbye to his children and followed soon afterwards to serve her in what lies beyond—_

_Bound to his queen, for eternity._


End file.
